


Come Alive

by threepwillow



Category: Glee
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe, Exhibitionism, M/M, Secret Relationship, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:25:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 52,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3865111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threepwillow/pseuds/threepwillow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU inspired by the song <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-DhjXyJIM">Anonymous Lover</a></i> by TalkFine - A beautiful stranger moves into the apartment across the alleyway from Blaine’s own, and the relationship they strike up through their bedroom windows in the middle of the night is more than Blaine could possibly have prepared himself for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been going up on my Tumblr for the past few weeks but a couple of kind-hearted messages prompted me to get an account here and post it here as well! So, here it is, lol. Chapters are of wildly, weirdly varying length from beginning to end because of some strange sense of narrative construction that I had. whoops. Huge thanks to the beautiful [Claire](http://saundersabergowitz.tumblr.com) for helping me get this to where it needed to be, and to wondrous writers [flaming_muse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flaming_muse/pseuds/flaming_muse) and [missbeizy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/missbeizy/pseuds/missbeizy) for (unknowingly) serving as my long-form AU inspiration!

“And you’re _sure_ you’re okay with it?” Tina asks for about the fortieth time. Blaine rolls his eyes – he can’t help it – but he’s laughing, too.

“Yes, Tina,” he says. “I am a hundred percent sure that you deserve to move in with your boyfriend rather than pretending like you actually still live with me.”

“I just don’t want you to get screwed on this,” she says, with a cutesy little pout. “The rent – ”

“Will be _fine_ with my promotion, and the new store opening up.” Blaine’s still not sure how he squeaked into a management role at the music shop, and he’s more than a little terrified of his new responsibilities, but he’s sure as hell not telling Tina that now. “I’m making more than I ever have, I can handle a shitty little place in Queens.”

“I just – ” She’s getting choked up – she never did break her waterworks habit from school – and his hand flies automatically to the ever-present handkerchief in his pocket. “I worry about you, Blaineydays,” she sniffles. “I don’t want you to be – lonely.”

“You’re moving _next door,_ T.”

“With my boyfriend!” she says. “Sam finally proposed to Mercedes, and Elliot’s getting serious with that guy from his burlesque show, and _you_ – ”

“Shh,” says Blaine, rubbing her shoulders and her back as he pulls her in for a hug. “You guys will be right there if I need you. I’m gonna be just fine.”

He has no idea if that’s true – or even what it truly means to be _fine_ , really. But he’s sure as hell not telling Tina that, either.

\--

The move goes smoothly, not that Blaine expected anything less. (They are, after all, literally only hauling stuff to the next building over; they don’t even have to get a truck.) Tina’s beau, Tristan, is a dancer – she certainly has a type – with classically-trained muscle to spare, so Blaine is happy to tote books and lamps and cushions with Tina and Mercedes while he and Sam do all the heavy lifting. He’s just glad that they’ve managed to capitalize on the one day this April when it’s somehow not raining torrentially.

The new apartment complex across the narrow alleyway from Blaine’s own has been under development for almost a year now, and Tina and Tristan jumped at a chance to be among its first tenants. Blaine knows the place is really hoping to pull a younger, gentrified crowd, considering the general state of the neighborhood. The whole place is actually really nice, but the price reflects what’s outside instead – no one’s going to pay _that_ much to live practically on top of an active firehouse, sirens blowing full-bore at all sorts of weird hours and the very foundations of their buildings trembling with the rumble of the trucks from further up the block. It doesn’t bother Blaine too much, though. New York City is still enchanting enough, even with school four years behind him. And Blaine’s got high hopes that the new complex’s fresh occupants could bring some fun, friendly neighbors that might help keep his favorite coffee house two blocks over from going out of business.

The five of them head out to dinner once the move is over, Tina and Tristan bickering sweetly about wall art and houseplants like they’re already married, and Sam already trying to wrangle an invite for game night on their huge TV. Blaine’s a fifth wheel and he knows it. It doesn’t get him down, though. He loves his friends, and he’s secure in his job – it’d be stupid to beg the universe for more. They do their best to include him because they’re wonderful, and everything _is_ just fine, just like he’d told Tina a couple nights ago.

“I was hoping we’d be on _your_ side of the building, though,” Tina laughs, nudging Blaine’s knee under the table. “We could send each other Morse code signals by flickering our light switches. We could share a clothesline over the alley!”

“In this spring?” he says. “Nothing would ever dry!”

“Some of those windows on the other side line do line up pretty dead-on,” says Tristan. “You might wanna get some thicker curtains.”

Blaine laughs. “I’ll definitely look into it.”

“Dude, what if it’s a hot chick,” says Sam. “Or a hot dude! Of course!”

“ _Or_ ,” says Mercedes, “what if it’s some sixty-five year old To Catch A Predator perv?” She shoves at Sam a little on their side of the booth. “Watch your butt, Anderson.”

“And make sure no one else is!” They all laugh with Tina, and the waitress comes to bring them more water. Yeah, Blaine thinks. Good friends, good job, good food – what more could I want?

It’s only when he comes home to a half-empty apartment, Tina’s side of their shared spaces looking practically naked now, that he starts to think about how weird this is going to be. And it’s only when Blaine goes to bed that night and hears nothing but the dead quiet of empty solitude that he starts to think, Maybe I’m a little more lonely than I’ve let myself admit.

Loneliness might be Blaine’s least favorite thing. It’s why he works so hard to avoid it: he can make friends with just about anybody, and he loves to go out and experience new things alongside new people. It’s definitely what drew him to the stage so much in school – how can you be lonely when you’re sharing your heart and soul and smile with an audience of hundreds, or thousands? But at some point, Blaine figures, he crossed the line and turned into a Real Adult. He has to start thinking about the future, and not just the present. Responsibility, sustainability, security, that sort of thing. And it’s hard to be responsible in a career as volatile as performing. Hard to be secure when you’re baring your most intimate self to a crowd of strangers.

A lot easier to handle being lonely, though.

He rolls over against the mattress, focuses on the soft calm sound of the rain beginning to fall outside, and runs through plans for styling his newly-bared apartment space in his head until he falls asleep.

The apartments start to fill with new tenants over the next few weeks. Blaine sees just as many moving trucks as fire engines some days, and his coffee house and the bodega grocery are bustling with unfamiliar faces. The alleyway between the two buildings fills with stacks of used, rain-soggied cardboard boxes that don’t fit into the over-filled dumpsters. He’s happy to see he was right about the clientele, too: a girl with fuchsia hair and a guy with an ever-present set of bongo drums are among the people he begins to kind of recognize on sight.

There is, it turns out, a third-floor window almost exactly across the way from Blaine’s own, set maybe a few inches lower into the brown concrete wall. Blaine had laughed a little to see it after Tina’s move, but hasn’t thought of it much since then, especially since no one seems to be living there yet. He can almost see into the apartment above that one, which does have people in it, and he feels a little weird about it; he tries to keep his blinds closed after a certain hour of the night, or even all day, with this miserable rain.

But then May breaks, and the rains pass, and very suddenly it’s sunny and clear and a boy is moving into the apartment and oh, wow.

He’s a man, not a boy, really. It’s just a little hard for Blaine to place him age-wise with his stunning, spritely features, his milk-white profile positively glowing when Blaine catches his first glimpse. His hair is styled _perfectly,_ despite the obvious physical effort he’s exerting with the move (and god, wow, _man_ indeed, Blaine was so busy staring at his face that he almost missed those _shoulders_ ), and Blaine would be lying if he said this guy wasn’t almost exactly his type in the looks department. He’s beautiful.

“And I’m creepy,” Blaine mutters, as he realizes he is still staring at a total stranger – a totally _hot_ total stranger, but _still_ – from the aligned windows of their totally _separate_ apartments. He shakes his head a little to get it cleared, then sinks back onto the sofa with his laptop, trying to get the hang of these new product order forms for the shop. He encourages himself to put the beautiful man across the alley out of his head, and because Blaine is polite and professional, he does.

\--

“Look, I know you like the brass ones, but they’re not selling well enough and Danny says we’ll probably stop – ”

“Danny says you can’t do anything that I like because Danny hates me,” Sam grumbles, and down the line Blaine hears him rolling over on the sofa. He can practically see his melodramatic _flop_.

“Danny doesn’t hate you,” says Blaine, although he’s not entirely confident in that assertion, because –

“Danny hates everyone, dude.”

“I can try to keep them in the store, I’m just telling you, you’re probably gonna have to start getting us to special-order them.”

“Am I still gonna get the discount?”

“That I can probably arrange.”

“Ew, you sounded so smug just then,” Sam teases, but Blaine can hear his grin, and Blaine is kind of grinning, too. “I can’t believe you’re letting this _branch manager_ thing give you such a big dumb head.”

“I deserve it, having to make sense of Danny’s stock logs. The back-of-house there is a nightmare, I swear, they need me _badly_. And your dog needs _you_ badly, go _feed_ her, I can hear her barking through the phone – ” Sam’s already shouting _Shut up, Lupita!_ at her, and they hang up, still laughing. No longer in need of decent cell service, Blaine finishes off the banana he’d been eating and heads down into the subway, more than ready to head home after a long day at the music store.

It _has_ been a long day, set into a long week at the most recent end of what feels like Blaine’s long, dragging life. He can tell, because when a guy on the 1 train even _remotely_ catches his eye, Blaine’s first instinct is to assess and evaluate everything he can about him, to pick him apart – first to try to psych himself up to approach him, but then, like always, to talk himself out of it. God, Anderson, get it together, because he may be cute and that cyclist’s physique is nothing to kick out of bed but he’s probably a good three years younger than you and he plays his headphones loud enough to hear across the train and he’s _straight_ , probably, even if that is the new Lorde single. It’s a horrible game Blaine can’t stop playing with himself: What can I find that’s _wrong_ with this guy, to prove he’s not worth it so I can justify not even trying, saving my energy, keeping it safe? And if he’s already playing on a Thursday afternoon, there’s just no saving Blaine’s week, after all.

He switches from the train to his bus, gets off at his regular stop, walks the rest of the way with just a quick pause to grab a muffin from the coffee house for later. His mailbox is empty; his building is quiet, for once, and he puts his DVR backlog on while he hits the treadmill, catching up on reality garbage and laughing while he sweats. In the shower he decompresses from some work stuff and thinks through more Tina-less redecoration plans that haven’t quite smoothed out yet. Dinner is leftover Chinese, and that chocolate muffin for dessert, treating himself.

The glamorous life of an overworked bachelor on another run-of-the-mill Thursday night.

“Maybe I’ll get a cat.”

The heavy-set older man who lives downstairs comes up and asks for help with something under his sink – Blaine’s about one-third his size, so he fits a lot better, and sometimes in exchange the guy will change his lightbulbs – and with a glass of wine and a couple hours perusing his internet haunts, Blaine calls it a night. The weather’s been nice, probably the last real pleasant spell before the nastiness of summer kicks in, so he leaves his bedroom window open, letting the urban white noise of the city lullaby him to sleep.

A little after three a.m. the familiar, infuriating sounds of a fire truck taking off jolt him back awake. Blaine groans, the sirens loud and persistent, and shambles out of bed to slam his window shut, for all the good it will do. He knows sleep won’t return easily – he’s always been that way, once he’s awake he’s capital-a Awake – so he grabs his glasses from the bedside table too, thinking he’ll probably get a glass of water and put some music on, and –

With his glasses on he can see so, so clearly, what’s happening in the window across the alley.

Blaine’s been doing his level best to keep the hottie in the opposite apartment out of his thoughts. All jokes from his friends aside, it’s _creepy_ , and Blaine knows if the situation were reversed he would feel incredibly uncomfortable. He doesn’t look. He goes out of his way _not_ to look. But here and now, this is –

He’s looking.

Because through from Blaine’s bedroom window into this stranger’s, the soft bluish glow of a television or computer screen illuminating it all, one of the hottest guys Blaine has ever seen is touching himself.

All over. He touches himself all _over_. Hypnotized, almost against his own will, Blaine stares as this mystery guy runs broad, dexterous hands all down his bared chest, palming at his tight nipples, scratching fingers through the dark scrub of hair nestled between his hipbones. He drags long fingers in a tender caress over his collarbone, his wet mouth parted prettily, eyes squeezed shut. His other hand stays low and loose around his cock, and before long, there’s a rhythm, languid, liquid, hips rolling up to meet it in a perfect orbit, muscled thighs working hard and yet effortlessly with one calf still twisted in dusky sheets.

Blaine swallows dryly, desperately wishing for that all-but-forgotten glass of water now. Those thoughts from mere seconds ago seem hours old, time rushing away from him as he watches his neighbor pleasure himself almost _decadently_ , sucking loose now on his own thumb, his other hand still dreamily fisting his plump cock. When he twists his own fingers through his perfect hair and _tugs_ , his mouth falls sharply open in a cry Blaine can’t hear, his grip on his erection tightening too, and that’s when Blaine’s own cock finally makes the full commitment to flushing up hard in his boxers. Hair-pulling – Blaine is – _into_ that. Maybe. His neighbor’s muscles clench up in stark relief under his glow-pale skin as he winds himself tighter, and it’s almost like he _knew_ , like this whole unwitting show has been designed specifically to push Blaine’s buttons over, and over, and over again.

He fucks up into the sheath of his hand, the sweetness gone now that he’s starting to lose control. God, his cock is _long_ , it looks delicate and yet powerful just like the rest of him, and Blaine finally lets himself think – what would it be like, if I could have my own hand wrapped around that hot, hard dick? If _I_ could be the one wringing pleasure from him as he is from himself – so obviously good at it, his sculpted chest heaving for breath now, that big cock glistening wet – But his thoughts have barely begun wandering down that path when suddenly the other man is coming, and _coming_ , whole back bowing in an arch up off the flat of the mattress in a way that bulges his chest and thigh muscles up thick and strong, his face screwed up in ecstasy so tight it must border on pain. God, it must have been some orgasm, wracking through his whole body like that, Blaine can only hope for something even half as amazing as he reaches down to –

And then Blaine realizes he just watched a total stranger get off without his permission, and his own boner promptly wilts in utter shame.

Blaine’s furious with himself. He just stood here and watched this happen, like that’s okay to do? He was going to get _himself_ off to this? No part of this whole thing is acceptable! It’s a huge violation of another human being’s sexual autonomy, to use him in that way, he never consented to Blaine’s dirty voyeurism and Blaine is a _responsible grown adult_ and this behavior is –

Across the alleyway, the now very satisfied man in the other apartment gets up from his bed, stands at the window, and _waves_ , looking Blaine dead in the eye and smiling coyly, perhaps a bit sheepish but looking in no way violated or ashamed.

Blaine lets out a huge, terrified exhale, waves the tiniest bit back on sheer panic-fueled instinct, and then drops his blinds shut and sinks abruptly to the floor.

He will never get back to sleep now.


	2. Chapter 2

“Andersonnn!” booms Danny, as he bustles into the store. His nasal voice lingers on the ‘n’ before popping off, almost giving it an extra syllable, _An-der-son-nuh_ , like he always does. Blaine hates it. “Where’s the performance rosters at, huh? Where’s all my shit?”

Right to it, then. “I just sent Bernie to get it from the copy shop, she should be back in the next twenty minutes,” he says, pouring on the polite sweetness almost aggressively. “What can I do for you in the meantime?”

It’s weird, because Blaine wants to like Danny. Blaine does like Danny, for the most part, just like he likes most people – Danny’s a good guy, and he runs a good business. It’s just that Danny belongs to this strange subset of humanity that Blaine rarely encounters: the people who don’t like him _back_. Tina especially has always been kind of dumbfounded by his surly attitude. _Everyone likes **you** , Blaine,_ she’d said, and Blaine kind of shook his head like, I know, right? But so far Blaine’s been unable to win Danny over to genuinely _liking_ him, and not just being, like, a guy he knows, no matter what he does. Even now he doesn’t understand how he got promoted to branch manager here while Danny gets the new store across town on its feet.

Blaine really loves working at RockShop, and the model they’ve put in place for their space. The front of the shop is all guitar stuff, records and CDs, other small-time supplies, and Blaine has recently added in a towering rack of sheet music books for the Broadway hopefuls who come in giggling on their rock-band hopeful boyfriends’ arms. He’s got his computer at the back counter where they can order in most anything, and then in the back room, it gets deeper into the instrument stuff, drum kits and brass and all kinds of amps and synthesizers that Blaine pretty much only knows the names of because he runs inventory spreadsheets twice a week. Danny and Bernadette are way better about the electronic side of things. But Blaine’s favorite thing about the shop is their store-front window.

Or rather, they don’t have a window, not for most of the year. Danny’s really secured himself a business here by pulling out the glass from their big display and leaving it open to the street, much like Blaine’s seen bars and restaurants do in the summer, and instead of showing off products and new releases in the space, Blaine – and this is his absolute _favorite_ part of the job – coordinates a rotating roster of buskers and open-mic performers who play for customers and passers-by alike. Anyone is welcome, and it still gets Blaine a little emotional, to think that they’re providing a safer, cleaner space for people who would ordinarily just perform straight on the street corners of the area, subject to all the hostilities New York and its less savory citizens can bring. It’s a pain in the ass when the weather turns nastier: the hardest part of training any new RockShop employee is the drill-style precision they have to engrain in them for the two-person sealing-up process for rain, and it makes the shop hard to keep warm in the parts of winter when they keep the stage running. But no one seems to mind. Blaine will gladly wear a couple extra layers indoors some days if it means that trans kid and his girlfriend with the harmonica aren’t getting spit on outside a subway station somewhere.

They’ve gained some obvious notoriety in the past couple years, and performance slots on prime foot-traffic hours are in high demand, so Blaine’s ended up in charge of managing the roster. Danny’s convinced he’s trying to sneak Sam on there without following proper procedure, and that’s probably why Danny kind of hates Sam. The Blaine thing has been going on a lot longer than that, though.

“Anderson. Are you listening to a goddamn word I’m saying?”

Blaine tunes back in and replays the past forty seconds of getting talked at as quickly in his mind as he can, searching for something to hold onto, anything to say. “Those new hi-hats are selling a lot faster than we thought they would, I didn’t think it would be a problem if I ordered some more.”

“Yeah, it _wouldn’t_ , if you, like, ordered _the new ones_ ,” Danny says, doing that voice that Blaine knows is meant to imply _duh, moron_ ,which he also hates. “Except this order sheet you CC’d me on has us down for a shipment of three more sets of the model that’s _two models ago_.”

Blaine blinks stupidly. “I-it does?”

Danny waves his phone in Blaine’s face, and Blaine squints in to look at the order sheet. Wow, that’s totally the wrong product number – it’s not even anywhere near the correct one. He’s never made a mistake like this before, and it sinks hard into the pit of his stomach. He’s only been a manager for a couple months and already he’s screwing it all up?

“You’re gonna need to push those hard when they come in, Andersonnn,” says Danny. “Don’t let this store go down the shitter just because I’m workin’ on the other one. We’re cool with me dropping three times a week, right? I don’t need to haul my ass across the city more often and waste even more of my time?”

“No, no, I’ve got it covered, I promise. I’m so sorry for the error and it won’t happen again.”

“It better not! Also I wanna see that roster posted for all of June the next time I’m in here!”

“You got it!” Blaine calls weakly, and Danny’s already bustling to the back, scowling at the rack of songbooks as he passes. Blaine sighs, and slumps a little at the counter, thankful that it’s still before lunch time and there weren’t any customers around to witness that. It’s _embarrassing_. Blaine feels so lousy. How could he have made such a basic, obvious mistake? Where had his head been, as he was filling out the order numbers, what on earth was he –

The sinking in his stomach drops even deeper. Oh. Blaine – might have an idea of what he was thinking about. And it definitely had nothing to do with the music store.

Try as he might, it’s been impossible for Blaine to completely scrub that hot, humiliating twenty minutes he spent watching his across-the-alley neighbor through his window from his mind. “Accidentally watched a hot guy jerk off” definitely eclipses “my roommate moved out” for Most Interesting Thing That’s Happened This Month, but unlike Tina’s move, Blaine doesn’t really feel comfortable sharing the tale of his three a.m. tryst with the waking world – and yet by not telling _someone_ , the prickly-hot knowledge of it just sort of sits in the back of his mind, drifting to the forefront of his consciousness randomly in moments of his down-time with no way of Blaine purging it out. And like, how could he? When something crazy like this happens, something unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before, how do you just wipe that from your memory?

Blaine’s creepy. God, he knows it, he has to admit it to himself now – no matter how congenial and kind and helpful and trustworthy he is in the daylight hours, once the world is asleep, Blaine’s _creepiness_ creeps up on him, like the guilt of cheating on your diet but magnified through a lens of erotic sleaziness until it leaves him with a bad taste in his mouth. He’s thought about it more than he ever thought he would, this strange thing he’s become complicit in. And he’s not so naïve as to pretend that no part of it was exciting, or alluring, or _hot_. What’s more basely stimulating than a naked guy who’s just your type? But out of the moment, looking back on it with twenty-twenty hindsight, the creepy situation goes from being weirdly hot to just weird. Blaine had to take a shower that night before he could even think about going back to sleep, washing off the filminess of the illicit encounter that didn’t seem to want to leave. Even if – and it’s impossible, unthinkable, but _even if_ his naked neighbor was ultimately okay with the whole thing, was not going to move right back out of that apartment away from Blaine or call the police, nothing can change the fact that Blaine got involved before he _knew_ that. Blaine didn’t _know_ what he was doing was okay, and he _did it anyway,_ the most basic violation of anyone that his mind can come up with, here in the middle of RockShop on a Tuesday.

It’s beyond out of character for Blaine, and he thinks, Maybe that’s why it won’t leave me. Maybe the reason he keeps finding his thoughts wandering in that direction, sneaking in and catching him off guard at the oddest of times, is because Blaine still has no idea why he did it in the first place.

Or maybe he does know, and he just doesn’t want to admit it.

Tina’s old half of the apartment is still awfully empty.

He realizes he’s doing it _again_ , what the actual hell, when Bernie gets back from her errands toting the big eleven-by-seventeen performance roster in a flat envelope and a drink holder with three coffees – hers, Blaine’s, and Danny’s. Blaine breathes a sigh of relief, because that is _definitely_ going to help him stay focused. His relief is even more profound when she leans in close and whispers, “Don’t tell Danny, but I got his decaf.”

“Bless you,” he tells her, taking his first sip and already feeling revitalized.

With Bernie back he goes on his lunch break, munching quickly at the half-a-sandwich and bag of grapes he brought from home. The rest of the day goes smoothly – Blaine helps a kind woman through some upgrades for her second-hand ukulele, and a guy who owns a bar talks to Bernie for almost an hour before picking out and ordering some new in-house speakers. They have three performers on set for the afternoon hours, none of them at all alike and all of them only about so-so when it comes to talent. The last girl holds her own the best, fumbling through some show-tunes on the house keyboard she can barely play but with an absolutely beautiful voice, small and crystal-clear like she’s twice her (obviously quite young) age. Blaine’s restocking some racks of audio cords and woodwind reeds to the lilt of her Somewhere Over the Rainbow. When he goes home, he settles in for the night with some rainbow sherbet and watches _The Wizard of Oz_.

The apartment is dark except for the glow of his tiny television, a summer breeze rattling the blinds at his windows, and the Scarecrow says, _“I think it’ll get darker before it gets lighter.”_

Blaine tries to keep his thoughts from wandering, but it’s not working. At all.

\--

“So then Corinne – ”

“Which one is she?”

“The real tall lightskinned one – Corinne is like, kicking Carter’s leg, shaking him, trying to get him to notice – but he just keeps on wailing on his trumpet – ”

“With his fly down?”

“With his fly down the _whole time_.” Mercedes dissolves into giggles, and Sam’s laughing too, hopping up to do a pretty great impression of a trumpet with just his mouth, all the while shaking his crotch around in their personal space. Mercedes buries her giggles in her hands. Blaine starts singing – “Blow, Gabriel, _blow_ ,” and Mercedes snorts and laughs even harder. Sam starts losing it entirely, and soon they’re loud enough that they’ve agitated Lupita, hopping up out of her little dog bed and bouncing around their ankles.

“Ugh, thank you so much for watching her,” says Sam, scooping her up in his arms and scratching under her chin. “It’s gonna mean so much to Stacey for us to be there for the softball finals. All her friends think I’m super hot.” He winks, and Mercedes shoves at him.

“And it’s nice to see your _family_ every once in a while, you big dingus,” she says. “Sorry about this. I know y’all technically aren’t supposed to have dogs at your place – “

“The landlady said it’s fine for a couple of days,” Blaine assures them. “She’s gonna rattle around and get suspicious pretty quick, though, so no staying over extra in Kentucky, no matter how hot your sister’s friends think you are.” Blaine winks back at Sam, and they share a grin. Mercedes just rolls her eyes.

They clean up from their takeout dinner quickly, and with more laughs, goofing around in the kitchen. Blaine’s happy to do his friends a favor like this – they’re his _friends_. He loves them. And they love _him_ , something he needs to remind himself of more often. But watching them dance and flirt around each other – still couply and _in_ love, so obviously getting married so, so soon – Blaine feels a little part of his heart ache, not the part that loves them but the part that doesn’t have anyone to love _like that_. He can feel so strongly, what it must be like, the shape of the piece that’s missing, its soft edges and sharp curves. He wonders if it’s possible to _miss_ something if you’ve never had it to begin with.

“Be good for Uncle Blaine!” Sam coos into the front of Lupita’s crate, holding it right up to his face. She sticks her tiny tongue out through the bars and right up his nose. “Don’t go number 2 on his carpets!”

“Don’t go number anything on my carpets,” Blaine says, with a furrowed eyebrow and a hint of trepidation. Sam laughs, but it’s not a very reassuring laugh, and then they’re ushering him out, with hugs and more laughter and promises to take pictures of Stacey’s big game. Blaine tucks the crate in close to himself as he heads back into the streets, enjoying the pleasant late-spring evening air for the few breaths he can take in it before loading onto the bus home.

“Looks like it’s just you and me now, puppy,” he tells Lupita as he lets her out to trot around his place. Her collar jingles softly in the silence of his apartment. The loneliness starts to set in a little more heavily.

His eyes flick to the Venetian blinds of his bedroom window, and then away, just as quickly.

\--

“Shh, shhhh, okay,” Blaine whispers, stroking his hand heavy and as soothing as possible across Lupita’s shaggy dark-grey little head. It’s about five in the morning and she’s trembling with agitation, pattering her little paws right next to his head on the mattress – she obviously needs to go out. Blaine’s suddenly reminded of why he’s never felt the urge to get a dog. A cat could go to the bathroom all by herself.

Groggily, he clips the leash (sparkly purple – she’s clearly not just Sam’s dog after all) onto her collar, toes into the first pair of shoes he can find and throws a hoodie on over his tank and boxers to shuffle outside in the grey pre-dawn. Lupita’s antsy, but quiet and well-behaved once she’s able to do her business, toeing around along the mouth of the alleyway for a place she deems acceptable and eventually going for the classic fire hydrant approach. Blaine would almost chuckle at the cliché, except it’s five in the morning and he hasn’t had any coffee yet and it’s gross. He deliberately looks away, trying to give her some privacy (and because it’s _gross_ ), staring up at the side of his building and then at the side of Tina’s.

There’s a rustle of curtains in the window across from Blaine’s own, and when he looks closer, someone is there.

Not just someone. _Him_.

Blaine inhales sharply, forgetting for a second that he’s in the alley and the air smells like stale garbage and very fresh dog urine. Even as he’s coughing it out, though, he’s transfixed to that window, to that _man_ – the very man who keeps creeping back into Blaine’s dark, twisting thoughts, no matter what he does. They’ve noticed each other, now, making real eye contact even though Blaine’s squinting without his contacts, and after a moment of electric-charged mutual scrutiny, he quirks an eyebrow at Blaine, purses his lips a little, nods his head just slightly to Blaine’s own window. All as if to say, _Going back up?_

Blaine yanks on Lupita’s leash hard enough to make her yelp, and he apologizes to her but he’s already running back up the stairs.

Inside, Blaine unfastens the leash as quickly as he can before bolting to his own room and shutting the door, not keen on the dog interrupting anything that’s about to happen. He still can’t quite believe that anything _is_ about to happen. How is this _real_ – a beautiful stranger moves in next door, gets caught in a shamelessly sexual situation, and rather than run screaming, rather than call the cops on Blaine for voyeuristic violation, he extends an invitation _again_? Who in the real world, outside of bad romantic comedies or worse paperback fiction, looks out his window one night to see those perfect gasp-parted lips, marble-sculpture muscles lit by a flickering television in high-key relief, tugging hard and so _indulgent_ on a cock straight out of Blaine’s _dreams_ …

But Blaine fumbles his glasses on and tugs the pull-string for his blinds and the man is there, leaning on his window-frame, still gazing over at Blaine’s apartment. And in that moment, Blaine stops doubting reality. Blaine stops calling himself creepy. Blaine gives in to it and just lets himself _have_ this one nice, beautiful, mind-blowing thing.

Oh, and it is _so_ nice.

The man across the alley darts his eyes left and right – like he’s checking that the coast is clear – and then lifts his hands slow and deliberate to the button at the collar of his shirt. He pauses, there, eyes on Blaine’s like a question. Blaine takes a deep, shuddering breath, and nods his head, just the smallest little bob – _yes. Please._ With that same slow surety, the man begins to unbutton his shirt, head craned down to see his own actions, that artfully styled hair flopping forward in a way that’s somehow both bashful and incredibly sexy. He seems so – _demure_ , compared to his brazen showcase the last time they met like this, and it feels – oh, god. It feels almost like a seduction. He wants this, maybe even just as much as Blaine does, and yeah, Blaine _so_ does not feel creepy about it any more. It doesn’t feel dirty like he needs to take four showers and rinse out his eyes. It feels dirty like they maybe wouldn’t let him in to see it without a photo ID.

Blaine watches as inch by creamy inch of the man’s chest is revealed in the slip of space between his open shirt front, and when the last button is undone, he shrugs the shirt from his shoulders and sets it daintily on something just out of Blaine’s sight, probably a chair. The man thumbs casually at one of his own nipples just once and it hits Blaine in a shock like someone’s grazed his own, his cock throbbing in his underwear. The man’s hands finally come to rest hooked on the waistband of his own pants, dark jeans (Blaine can’t quite make out the color in the dim) that go beyond skinny and right into _wow, tight_. He tilts his head again, soft hair bobbing and eyelids lowering, and god, he’s so _expressive_ , because Blaine knows instantly exactly what that means. It means, _now, you._

_Oh_.

Blaine’s hard, god, so turned on by the half-striptease he’s gotten so far and it wasn’t even the good half. But somehow it never occurred to him that he might be expected to return the favor. It blisters over his skin like a shiver that’s hot instead of cold – they’re doing this in front of _open windows_. The man across the alley may be performing specifically for Blaine (and god, that’s a heady thought), and it may be pretty early in the morning yet, but anyone – _anyone_ , in a nearby apartment, walking outside down at street level – could glance up or over and see what’s going on in that man’s room. And anything Blaine does will be just as exposed.

The man leans against his window frame again, smiling slyly, and checks an imaginary watch on his wrist, a clear _I haven’t got all day_ that’s more tease than actual impatience. As if maybe for emphasis, he cups his hand just once around the sizable package sealed tight in those jeans, thumb stroking over his belt buckle.

Blaine darts his eyes left and right – checking that the coast is clear – and then says, Fuck it.

Far from the sensual tease of his daring partner, Blaine twists his arms down and grabs the hems of both his sweatshirt and his A-shirt, yanking them off up over his head and nearly losing his glasses in the process. He straightens them back out and stands up as tall and straight as he can, trying not to get too self-conscious, but that’s a pretty tall order. The gorgeous man in the other window is tall, porcelain-skinned, well-muscled in the most lithe and enticing way; Blaine is not really tall, kinda hairy, and in decent shape but in a way that’s probably hard to see in the shadowy morning haze. Plus, you know, there’s that whole “anyone walking by could be seeing me shirtless and fooling around with you” element. But the other man doesn’t seem discouraged by any of this, leaning so close to the window that Blaine can see his breath fog up the glass in one little spot, his mouth hanging open and his eyes riveted to – oh, if Blaine is reading his gaze right – to the place where the dark hair on Blaine’s stomach begins its trail downward into the waistband of his boxer shorts. Well, that’s uh. Reassuring. Blaine drags his fingernails through that thatch of hair just once, oh, but then again, as his cock gets harder, spurred by both the physical touch and the phantom caress of the attention he’s getting. His own mouth drops open, and his breath is coming quicker, his eyes rolling shut as he gives in to the sensation – but only for a moment, because it’s hard to tear his eyes away from his unnamed partner for too long, eager to see what comes next.

“Fuck,” Blaine breathes, because apparently what comes next is that the man across the alley is down to his underwear now, too, a pair of bright-blue briefs that are doing nothing to conceal how thick and prominent his erection is. God, he looks _huge_ like this, trapped in that bright tiny fabric, his thumbnail skirting the long long line of himself, and Blaine is embarrassed but kind of unsurprised to discover that his own mouth is actually watering. He makes himself scope back out, look at the big picture of it all, this gorgeous man standing on full display for Blaine, smooth milky skin and Greek-statue body and dark, heated eyes, his thighs trembling just enough to be noticeable – god, is he _holding himself back_? Is this doing just as much for _him_ as it is for Blaine?

The movement of his hand catches Blaine’s eye; he snags one thumb into the waistband of his briefs, tugging down just so, exposing a little of his own dark thick hair, and then – his other hand, gesturing right at Blaine, pulling focus. He holds up three fingers.

He puts one down. _Two_. Blaine swallows, thickly, and nervously shifts his hands to his own shorts. This is officially the craziest thing he’s ever done, and the craziest part is, his erection isn’t even flagging. He’s still hard as a rock and so, so hypnotized. The man lowers another finger. _One_.

Blaine takes a deep breath, and when the man finally drops his hand altogether, they move as one, stripping off the last of their clothing and standing completely bare to one another in the dawning city light.

God, he’s just as beautiful as Blaine remembered him, his cock long and flushed dark, bobbing hard against his thighs. Blaine toes out of his own boxers and resists the overwhelming urge to cup his hands over himself, to hide, forcing his hands to his sides, letting the other man take him in. It’s really only fair – Blaine’s seen this man naked twice, now, and he’s just seeing Blaine for the first time. He watches for any reaction, nervous, _god_ , so nervous, afraid of being caught, afraid of disappointing, but through it all he’s so blindingly turned on that the fear feels like listening to music with only one earbud in, only half an experience, pushed to the back-burner by the more important, more amazing things demanding his attention.

The man’s eyes crawl all over Blaine, and then he slumps against the edge of his bed, reclining on one arm with his other hand fisted around his cock, and god, he looks – _hungry._ Almost desperate.

Did Blaine do that?

It’s enough to make his head spin, and he grabs for his own cock, too, stroking just as desperately, so relieved to have some kind of contact, some friction after all the visual tease. He rocks up on the balls of his feet to get his cock framed better in the window, wanting to make sure the other man sees just how affected he is by the whole thing. The muscles in his thighs burn as he jerks himself _hard_ , rolling his palm across his dripping-slick head, shoving its redness through the tunnel of his fist again and again. His mystery neighbor’s touches are fast and eager, too, thumbing his slit, stroking his chest, tweaking his nipples. He’s slid all the way back onto his bed now, just his neck craning upright, to make sure he can still see. Well, Blaine ought to give him something to really see, then.

Boldness bubbling up inside him from god knows where, Blaine lifts his hand from his dick to his mouth, licking up some of his own bitterness that’s streaked across it before sliding it open-palmed all the way down his chest, over his nipple, his trembling stomach, his thick trail of hair. The touch makes him shudder, and he feels his whole body shake with arousal; and he gives into it, lets it all happen so naturally, finally lets his eyes drift away from this gorgeous other man so that his head can loll all the way back on his shoulders, exposing his throat. He swallows hard as he grabs his own dick again, his other hand fondling his balls, fist _flying_ over his cock now, god, he’s never been this turned on in his _life._ He hunches forward, chasing his impending orgasm, trying not to obscure his cock too much from the other man’s view but god, he’s getting close, he can feel it just out of reach –

The man across the alley jolts up, suddenly stiff and strung-out, and comes, all over his hand, his stomach, god, comes _everywhere_. Blaine loses his mind trying to look everywhere at once, at the man’s thick throbbing cock, at his lean muscles bulging out where they tense with climax, at his beautiful, sex-struck face, lips and eyes open wide in a gasp of shock. This is nothing like the first time, when he touched himself decadent and luxurious like the most sinful dessert – this was hard and fast and desperate, a frenzy of need, body spasming in release mere moments after the thing truly began.

Blaine loses his mind knowing he did that – that this man instigated this whole thing, and Blaine still made him come _first_.

Blaine moans loudly into the silence of his own apartment, and he can hear Lupita scratching at the door to his room but he doesn’t _care_ , he’s so transfixed, he’s so, so _gone_ for the beautiful stranger that lives in the building next door. As Blaine watches him come down his own thrusts get clumsier and more frantic, fucking into his fist, the images of this man getting off to _him_ still flashing behind his eyes every time he blinks, or screws them shut in desperation. He’s so close, god, fuck, what is _happening_ to him –

In the other apartment, his neighbor rolls over, maybe to grab something with which to clean up, and for the first time, Blaine gets a full, unimpeded look at the man’s round, thick, tight, porcelain- _perfect_ ass.

The second the man’s eyes are back on him and not an _instant_ later, Blaine comes all over himself, streaking his hands, his stomach, up onto his chest a little, mess dripping in his body hair. Fuck, some of it got on the _window_. Once his limbs are working again, Blaine crouches down to grab his boxers and uses them to wipe that off, blushing a little when he remembers that the other man is going to see that. (After all this, _that’s_ what he’s embarrassed about.) Blaine can tell that he’s being laughed at, but it’s accompanied by an expression that very sincerely says, _Impressive_. They fumble through the rest of their cleanup, and a few tissues later, they both have fresh underwear on, and are just kind of…gawking at each other, eyes roaming the other unclouded now by their frenetic lust, one part fond to two parts awkward. Because, well, now what?

God, the whole thing was _incredible_. Blaine hasn’t had a boyfriend in some time, and his sexual relief has been decidedly one-sided lately, weak sloppy orgasms in the shower or alone in his bed after a night out dancing with strictly-platonic friends. Even when he was getting off with other people, it was never like _this_. This is some great big mind-blowing _thing_ , unbelievable and erotic and really probably like four kinds of kinky, something Blaine’s never even dreamed he would be involved in. Like every other piece of the weird puzzle leading up to this, Blaine’s having a hard time reconciling everything he’s just done with _anything_ he’s ever done before. Where does it go after this? Do they say “goodbye,” somehow, awkwardly, like the world’s most exhibitionist one-night stand? Does Blaine go over to his apartment sometime, or he come here, taking this out of the surreal romance-novel haze it’s been in and into something more tangible? Does Blaine come back to his window the next night and do it again?

Blaine stares over at the other man, who is sort of tentatively maneuvering around his bedroom, collecting up his discarded clothes, turning down the sheets and blankets of his bed, all the while shooting glances at Blaine over his shoulder or around his arms. Blaine admires the twist of his broad back, the elegance of his movements as he tidies up and – Blaine’s assuming, this guy must work nights – gets ready for bed. God, he really is just… _beautiful._ Finally, he gives Blaine a little wave of his fingers, smiles the softest least-sexual smile Blaine’s seen on him yet, and draws his gauzy curtains shut between them. Blaine vaguely registers giving a wave in return.

Blaine definitely wants to come back and do it again.

\--

He starts checking his window every night.

It’s almost a relief, the second “encounter” (as Blaine’s taken to calling them in his head). After the first one Blaine had been wracked with guilt, terrified that he’d crossed some line he’d sworn to himself he’d never cross. After that morning, that line was soundly erased. Blaine goes from shamefully hiding it to gleefully keeping it his dirty little secret, something private and sizzling just for himself that he can dig into to find a smile whenever Danny’s giving him grief at RockShop or his friends go out and do something fun only to remember at the last minute that they’ve forgotten to invite him. The only problem now is that instead of feeling super guilty, Blaine just feels…well, super horny. And with no way of knowing when the third “encounter” might take place, Blaine can only reminisce, and fantasize, and hope. And, y’know, compulsively check his bedroom window two or three times a night between the hours of two and six a.m.

“Have you been getting enough sleep?” Tina asks him, one afternoon when they’re finally catching lunch together, big heaping salads at Sweetgreen. He panics for about half a second before reining it back in, mouth full of corn and kale, gulping his watermelon lemonade to keep from choking.

“Why, are my bags really bad?” he asks, tapping his face. “Should I get a new cream, you think?”

“Your eyes are fine,” says Tina, sighing a little. “I just – I don’t know, you seem, tired, maybe? A little restless? You need to look after yourself, you know?”

“What, because you’re not there to do it now?” Blaine says, sulking into his salad bowl. “Contrary to popular belief, I _can_ take care of myself, you know.”

“No, Blaine – gosh, fine, sorry I asked.” She slouches back a little, too, and Blaine immediately feels bad for snapping at her. It’s not her fault he’s going crazy, all over a boy he doesn’t even really _know_. Maybe he should tell her. Maybe he should at least tell _someone,_ try to get a second opinion on it, try to wrap his head around it a little better – but almost as soon as the idea occurs to him he stomps it out. How on Earth do you just come out and tell someone _Oh, by the way, I’m having a surreal sort of sexual exchange with a guy who lives in your apartment building, but we’ve never spoken or touched each other, we just kind of get off together out our bedroom windows, hey, do you know maybe know him, see him in the hallways?_ Besides, something about keeping it a secret makes it that more seductive to him, private and perverse. God, he really is going crazy.

“No, I’m sorry,” he says instead. “I have been sleeping a little worse lately. I think it’s because of the change in the weather – it always messes me up when it starts to get hotter.” Things sure did get a lot _hotter_ , so that’s almost not even a lie. Almost.

“Okay, well, just let me know if you need any soup or Vapo-Rub or anything,” she says, her smile coming back. “You know I’m right next door.”

“Yeah, I know.” Does he ever.

And as luck would have it, it’s that night, of course, that Blaine peers over to the building where Tina lives and catches his third blessed glimpse of his sexy, beautiful neighbor, rummaging around his room like he’s looking for something, a deft casual grace like he doesn’t even know how perfectly his body works with itself. Blaine wants to get his attention, but short of opening his window and throwing a rock across the way he’s not sure how, so he ends up just watching wordlessly for a couple of minutes until the man notices him there.

His eyes light up and soften, and he gives that sweet, beautiful smile, but then there’s a small shake of his head, and an apologetic tilt of one shoulder. Blaine reads him just as easily as before: _Not tonight_.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed, but he nods, and smiles back, trying to be reassuring. He gives a little wave, his hand drifting over to rest across his heart when he’s done, and the other man mimics the gesture, smile twitching broader just once more before he tugs on the curtains and draws them shut again. Blaine closes his own blinds and wanders backward to his bed, flopping onto his back in a sprawl of resignation. He looks down his body toward his cock and thinks about starting something all on his own, but his heart’s not in it.

_Not tonight_. So is it really over, then, their affair burning brightly but then fizzling out like history’s sexiest firework? Or is it just _not tonight, but maybe again later_? Blaine finds himself desperately wanting to know what’s going on in this man’s life, why last week it was like they were starving for each other and tonight he’s deflecting. Did something happen, has something changed somehow? Is something – is something _wrong?_

As Blaine rolls over and tries to drift back to sleep, thankful that he no longer has Lupita to worry about, it occurs to him that at some point, the man across the alleyway became more than just a sexual entity to him. Somehow, along the way, after just two steamy “encounters” and this third sweet, apologetic deferral, Blaine really started to…care.

Just who is this beautiful stranger, anyway?

\--

“Whoooo are you, who-who, who-who,” Blaine mumbles to himself, trying not to be that guy that sings along with his iTunes in public but just unable to resist sometimes when it comes to The Who. Or, as the case may be, really stellar a cappella arrangements of The Who. Blaine never claimed not to be a dork.

As he bounces off the bus and down his block, though, the lyrics suddenly take on a whole new meaning, and he finds himself staring right at the building next to his – straight through the little windows on the doors, at a long string of mailboxes on the wall of the stairwell.

“Who are you?” he mouths to himself, not even in time with the song this time.

It would be so easy. He couldn’t dare ask Tina, but right now, there’s no one around – no doorman or anything, this is hardly the part of town for that – and Blaine could just duck into the foyer, glance around at the mailboxes, and find the one that belongs to – he does some calculations in his head. If Tina’s in 21, he must be in the thirties, maybe the higher digits because he’s around the other side of the building, and then Blaine can just process-of-elimination it –

His hand is actually on the handle to the door before he stops himself. What is _wrong_ with him? This is – sex. Just sex. Mind-blowing, exhibitionist, clandestine mutual masturbation that’s more intense than anything Blaine has ever had, maybe, but that’s all it is. If this guy wanted Blaine involved in his personal life he would say so, would do something to draw him in or just shatter that glass himself. Wouldn’t he? Like the first time, Blaine’s so, so close to crossing the line of what his hot neighbor is willing to give, and he’s not about to run into his court and snatch the ball away. It’s not his place.

Blaine smiles to himself, shakes his head a little to clear it, and heads next door, back to his own building instead. His mystery lover can stay anonymous for as long as he wants.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s incredible, how something that is the wildest, strangest thing Blaine has done in his life becomes so… _normal_. It builds into his routine like all his other constants – work, friends, his favorite and least-favorite bus drivers, the guy down the hall that changes his lightbulbs, and now, a pale, captivating stranger bringing himself off together with Blaine through their drawn-back blinds and curtains, in the middle of the night when no one (Blaine tries to reassure himself) can see.

Of course, normal should never become a synonym for _boring_ , and it definitely doesn’t get less exciting just because it starts happening all the time.

Blaine feels his toes curl in his shoes just thinking about it – it happens _all the time_. Whatever deterred Blaine’s neighbor from instigating their “encounters” that one night must be gone completely by June. Now, they’ve got a standing date at three a.m., and though he isn’t always there every night when Blaine checks at his bedroom window, the nights that he is, everything about him makes Blaine’s breath hitch, his pulse race, his whole body give over to those clichéd throes of desire that he always thought must be just some fabrication of fiction until he started feeling them himself. Something about this man transforms something in Blaine, a part of him awake now that feels like it must have been asleep his whole life, lying dormant waiting for Blaine to learn what to do with it. And _oh_ does Blaine want to learn.

He learns the other man’s body, as much as you can learn anything you only see from a couple dozen feet away in the dim of a light-polluted city. His narrow waist tapers up into broad, strong shoulders, the body of a dancer, but one who clearly must regularly lift his dance partners clear off the floor, grace and power built right into his muscles, into his bones. There’s a black blot on one shoulder that Blaine realizes one night must be a tattoo, though he can’t make out quite what it is across the alleyway. The places with twists and contours are easiest to see, to fixate on, anything that will catch light or fill with shadow – Blaine’s dreams are awash with the man’s collarbones, cheekbones, the duskiness between his legs that his long beautiful cock rises up from, the creases just under the high tight cheeks of his ass. (God, his ass. Blaine’s never thought himself especially an _ass man_ before, but he’s going to have to seriously reconsider.)

And the more they do, the more Blaine feels he learns about himself, too. He learns that despite his mortification initially, the fear and panic of being so open with a side of his life that’s always been so private, that putting himself on display for his hot neighbor doesn’t really bother him at all, isn’t even challenging. It almost reminds Blaine of the spotlight of performing; he learns that this is basically no different than things he used to do, albeit a very risky, specific type of show for an audience of (presumably) just one. He even moves the lamp in his bedroom from near his bedside to closer to the window, lighting his set for the other man’s eye, discovering the best angles to tilt his thighs or shoulders or parted lips into to make him lick his lips and touch himself faster, sloppier. He learns that maybe the idea that he has a _kink_ isn’t really as terrifying as he thought.

True, he tries not to think about it, about what the things he does in his bedroom window mean in terms of his psyche and his sexual appetites. He doesn’t let himself google “exhibitionism,” doesn’t let himself lie awake at night after their beautiful rendezvous analyzing just how unusual his circumstances are, and how _beyond_ unusual it is that it barely bothers him at all. But for the first time in a long time, Blaine has something that is _his,_ only just for himself, and it’s so incredible – and incredibly _distracting_ – that it’s easy to put all other thoughts out of his mind.

He remembers the first night that it sort of – escalated, the night it went beyond a flirtatious striptease and his hand on his cock, watching the other man do the same. Blaine had been sleeping naked, as he’s taken to doing now that it’s getting hotter outside and now that – well, _now_ , and his soft alarm had buzzed beside his pillow, no noise, just vibrate, that it was three o’clock and that really, he ought to get up and check the window. Blaine’s already half-hard as he slides up and out of bed, not bothering to cover up in any way, pushing back the blinds to make sure his neighbor is there before he slides them all the way up. But he is there, also naked, a delighted grin on his face that’s barely even sexual but more like he’s genuinely glad to see Blaine there. Blaine waves, and puts his hand on his heart, like he did the night of their third “encounter,” which already seems so long ago. The other man repeats the motion back, and then, from the chair or whatever it is that Blaine knows sits just beyond what he can see through the window, he reaches over and picks up a thick, teal-green shape.

“Holy shit,” Blaine whispers to himself. That’s definitely a dildo, and his mind is already racing a million miles a minute down the different paths that could lead to wherever this is obviously going, getting ahead of himself, cock fattening up harder and harder against his leg.

The man holds the toy up to the window, squints one eye, puts his thumb up next to it in an exaggerated parody of an artist trying to judge scale. Blaine makes a face at him, confused, but the man just smirks, cocking an eyebrow and gesturing a little with the hand still holding the toy to a space just below Blaine’s eyeline. What – oh. Oh, holy _shit_. Blaine peers as closely as he can at the dildo, then nervously looks back down at his own cock, stiff and eager for attention. The dimensions of the two are perhaps…not dissimilar. He groans and wraps a hand around his erection, just holding it there, needing something to take the edge off but way more interested in what’s happening in the other apartment. The other man makes sure he’s got full, unobstructed eye contact with Blaine, and then raises the dildo and slides it into his mouth.

Blaine curses again, louder this time, and slams the heel of one fist to the frame of his window, bracing his weight so he can lean forward and just _stare_. Those lush, wicked lips sink down around the silicone like they were born to do it, and Blaine follows the path of them like a cat’s eyes on a laser pointer, nearly bobbing his head in sync with the man’s swirls and swallows. He feels his hand fall into the same rhythm on his cock, caught up between the fantasy of the blowjob and the equally-hot reality of his gorgeously sexy mystery neighbor fellating a fat green toy that he is _pretending is Blaine_. God, he can get nearly the entire thing into his mouth – he turns in profile and Blaine stares at his stunning features, those strong dexterous hands pushing it in in _in_ , the knob of his throat working up and down as he swallows around the dildo, eyelashes fluttering, chest heaving for breath. More than ever Blaine wishes he could hear into that apartment, hear if the man is whining or moaning or just sort of panting from his nose, desperate for air. His other hand still works over his cock smooth and sure like sucking Blaine off would be all he needed to get there, too.

Blaine comes twice that morning – once not long after it begins, and then, body wracking, muscles wrenching, again, because twenty minutes later the man leans back onto his bed, props his feet up on the edges of his window frame, and slides the toy home right into his pre-slicked ass.

Blaine smiles to himself, his cheeks flushing and cock stirring just thinking about it here in the light of day, and starts humming a little, a line or two of On The Street Where You Live. He starts unpacking a box of electronic tuners, getting ready to price-tag and shelve them, when Bernie bustles up from the back room and shoots him an intrigued little look.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” she says, eyeing him up and down. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Blaine can’t exactly say _my next door neighbor has the greatest ass I have ever seen and I’ve gotten off with him eight times in the past two weeks and three times without him_ , can he? He tries for something a little more PG: “I dunno, I guess I’m really excited that it’s finally summer. Glad to get that rain out of here and bring on the sunshine!”

“You are very sunshiney,” she agrees, laughing. “Is that really all, though? You’ve been super-chipper a lot lately, what’s new pussycat? Ooh, is it a _boy_?”

“A gentleman never kisses and tells,” Blaine says breezily, but he hurries to step away from her with the tuners for shelving, not anxious for the conversation to continue down that road. She has no idea how close to home she’s hitting and he’s afraid to push his luck with keeping her in the dark.

So maybe he has been in a pretty good mood these past few weeks. Who wouldn’t? His affair with the man across the alleyway has been rejuvenating, breathing new fire and light into the cobwebby corners of Blaine’s lonely little life. The open, easy desire his hot neighbor obviously has for him has been a beautiful boost to Blaine’s self-confidence, his comfort in his own skin and body, and the orgasms – they’re _out of this world_. Blaine’s pretty sure it’s impossible to be having sex that good – even sex that almost isn’t _sex_ at all, barely fits under the blanket label of the word, sex without ever even laying a hand on one another – without it putting an extra spring in your step. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that someone else has noticed.

Unfortunately, Bernie’s still following him up front from the back counter. “No, seriously,” she says. “If you’ve got a new boyfriend and you haven’t told me about him, I swear to you we are not friends for the rest of the week.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Blaine assures her, rolling his eyes and cocking his head at her. Because, well, he doesn’t, does he? Not – technically.

“Good – because there is someone I _need_ for you to meet.” She snugs up next to him and starts tugging out her phone. “His name is Allen and he’s the TA for my Mixed Media Arts class at school, he’s from someplace down south and has the _cutest_ accent – hang on, I have him friended on Facebook – look! Totally single, totally ‘interested in men,’ and look at those _arms._ Please capitalize on this and let me live vicariously through you.”

Blaine chuckles and takes the phone from her – the guy is cute, a redhead with a ponytail and a definite southern-boy charming smile. Blaine likes everything about him that he liked about Sam back when that ill-fated mini-crush tried to materialize. “He’s pretty hot,” he admits.

“Yesss!” says Bernie. “He’s a photographer, he’s a Cancer, I can totally get his number for you if you want.” She waggles her eyebrows at him, makes it into a question, and he just laughs even more.

“Mm, I don’t know, Bernie, what makes you think he’s looking for someone right now?”

“So what? He’s gonna take one look at you and change his mind, _obvi_.”

“Well, who says _I’m_ looking for someone right now?”

“Are you serious?” she says. “You’re that happy and carefree and _excited about summer_ that you’re going to blow off Allen the Hot TA?” When he doesn’t say anything right away, she rolls her eyes hard right back at him, jamming her phone back into her pocket and walking back to the back room again, walking backward for the first few steps and keeping her eyes on him. “Okay, well, remember this the next time you’re fifth-wheeling it with the Fantastic Four out there. Don’t say I never did anything for you!”

“You’re a champ, Bernie!” he calls after her, and as she’s throwing him a sarcastic peace-sign over her shoulder, a guy with a huge djembe shoulders in the front door, getting ready to set up for his afternoon busker set. Blaine hops to immediately to help him out, making sure the tuners are all tagged and straightened on the shelf before bouncing over to try to make the busker top priority, try to focus on what he needs in terms of acoustics and in-house equipment.

Try to use work to distract himself from the man across his alleyway, and the disconcerting fact that he really just turned down a perfectly good “real world” date prospect for the sake of someone who doesn’t even know his name.

\--

Blaine is off from RockShop the next day, his first full day off in almost two weeks, and he couldn’t be happier. He loves his job – he tells himself that all the time, anyway, and really, he doesn’t _hate_ it – but when he looks around at his apartment and sees how it somehow manages to be half-empty and a total mess at the same time, he realizes this branch manager thing has been taking a bigger toll on him than he thought. He lets himself sleep in till about eleven thirty, then throws on some workout clothes and an eighties playlist and sets in for a floor-to-ceiling cleaning-fest-slash-dance-party. The _only_ way to clean.

He sings loudly along to Cyndi Lauper as he loads the dishwasher and wipes down the kitchen counter. He serenades the vacuum cleaner, trying to do both the male and female parts in Love Shack, as he twirls it around the living room floor. And he’s just getting going on some _serious_ channeling of Freddie Mercury while changing his sheets when a fire truck takes off from the station down the block, siren wailing uncomfortably loudly and drowning out his iTunes, totally killing his vibe. Blaine whines, arms slumping mid-pillowcase stuffing, and shifts over to the window, glaring out around the blinds at the source of the earsplitting noise. The lights and sirens are going full-bore but the truck is _stopped at a red light_ , surely it can’t be all that important?

“Dynamite with a laser beam…” he mumbles to himself a little, but the party’s over. He’s just about to turn and head back to making the bed, resolving to round up the laundry next and then fully commit to chilling out and doing nothing for the rest of the afternoon, when there’s a slight flicker of movement across the alley – and it’s one Blaine recognizes, one that sends a hot thrill through his veins and a cold shiver down his spine. The tiniest motion of the softest fabric and Blaine reacts like Pavlov’s goddamn dog. His neighbor is there.

Blaine turns to look at the opposite window more straight-on. Sure enough, his anonymous paramour is there at the glass, also scowling over at the fire truck as it drives off through past Blaine’s building and further down the street, the noise blessedly retreating along with it. It takes him a moment to notice Blaine, but it’s obvious when he does, a delighted little smile curling onto his face, tinged as always with a hint of naughtiness that Blaine falls for every single time. God, he’s really never seen a more stunning creature. Blaine’s not sure what sort of exchange they’re really having right now – seeing each other in the genuine light of day is somewhat uncharted territory – so he doesn’t really know how to react. He plays it safe with an exaggerated-for-clarity eyeroll, a nod out at the street. _Fire trucks, right?_

The other man’s mouth tightens and he nods firmly, swiping a tight-fingered hand pointedly near his throat in a _cut that shit out_ gesture. Blaine gives a smiling little chuckle back to him, and then just sort of…stands there, awkwardly. He doesn’t know what else to “say” but he doesn’t want to leave. It’s – nice, to be having this sort of moment. Something about it tugs at him in an inexplicable little way.

After not too long of a moment at all, though, Blaine notices a change in the other man’s demeanor, his body’s angles shifting, his lips parting, his gaze growing darker. He’s beginning to look – well, much like he usually does when they’re peeping out their windows like this, studying on Blaine in that hungry sort of way that makes Blaine’s whole body start singing with arousal. The expression is even more compelling in the light of day, where Blaine can see all of his features more clearly than he ever has, can almost even start to guess at the color of his eyes (lighter, perhaps, than he thought before, maybe green or blue). It occurs to Blaine, suddenly, that he _is_ wearing a tight black tank top and even smaller green workout shorts, clothes and hair both streaked through with sweat from his vigorous house-cleaning (and, yes, vigorous dancing) – and that maybe some of those elements might be…appealing, to the man in the other apartment.

It also occurs to Blaine that it is _broad fucking daylight_ and that he can still hear traffic in the street beyond, voices from the open windows of other apartments, pedestrians down on the sidewalk.

And that he’s still getting so turned on that he can’t breathe.

Nervous and almost dumbfounded with disbelief, eyes and mouth both widening, Blaine slowly jabs a pointed finger straight down at the floor a couple times: _Right now?_ His gorgeous neighbor just shrugs, cool as a cucumber even with his face painted into an expression of pure predatory sex. Blaine’s heart is beating _so fast_. What is he _doing_? This is so much different than doing it in the cover of darkness – something about the sun being up, the noises of the city echoing up the brick and cement of the alley, takes it out of the dreamy, sexy haze Blaine’s been boxing their “encounters” away in inside his mind and into something more real, something Blaine has to take more responsibility for. This, somehow, isn’t the same fun and games any more. And yet – and _yet –_

He rakes his fingers back through his product-free hair, sending his sweaty curls tumbling every which way. The other man nods, eyebrows furrowed but smiling, _ooh yeah_. Blaine lets himself smirk a little, eyelashes fluttering, _well all right then_ ; he runs a thumb over his bottom lip, wetting both with his tongue, slides a hand down into his shorts without taking any of his clothes off to adjust his stiffening cock. His neighbor seems all about that – he’s sitting on the edge of his bed now, forearms braced on his knees, leaning forward intently to see, to watch – but he raises one hand, index finger craning forward and pointing down, and twirls it in a little circle. _Turn around_.

Truthfully, it makes it easier. When he’s not looking down at the intimidatingly wide-awake world outside his window, Blaine can focus more on making it something just for the man across the alley, a personal performance in the way he knows they both get so much from. And it’s clear that’s what it is right now – his neighbor has made no move to take off his own clothes (a scoop-neck tee under a stunningly tailored vest, more layers than Blaine would ever wear in the late-June heat but god does it work on _him_ ) or offer anything back to Blaine, for the first time content just to watch and wait and enjoy. And for the first time, Blaine’s feeling ready to indulge. He thinks hard about every movement before he makes it, strives for steady, deliberate; he raises his arms up over his head and stretches tight, like he’s cooling down after working out, letting the muscles stand out in his back and his shoulders as prominently as he can make them. Then he rolls his spine all the way down, craning his fingers to his toes, ass sticking straight out toward his window. He feels insanely powerful right now even as he’s practically _presenting himself_ , knowing that every move he’s making is being watched with that hunger and intensity from across the alley. Down on street level, a car honks its horn and some city birds flutter and squawk up towards the building.

Still bent over, Blaine raises his hands up to his waist and tucks his thumbs into the band of his shorts, rolling it slowly, slowly down the upturned curve of his ass. He almost giggles – if anyone looks now, it’s just going to look like he’s mooning the whole alleyway – but that heat and arousal are still caught up in a knot in his chest, black spots popping behind his eyes, brain shorting out if it tries to genuinely process what keeps happening between the two of them and how insaneit is, how incredible. He steps up out of his shorts and then bobs a little on the balls of his feet so that his ass wiggles, trying to be cheeky, a little afraid of how serious it’s getting, before standing up and turning back around to face his window and his neighbor, trading the view of his ass for one of his now fully-hard dick, tank top rucked up around his ribs. Blaine’s hand drifts up and through his hair again, fisting and tugging at the damp mess, and _god_ if that still doesn’t get him every time; his other hand slides instantly to his cock, his whole body rolling into the first couple of strokes.

He just feels so _hot_. He wants to be hot for him, tries to think about everything he’s learned the other man likes, the hair on his belly and the muscles in his thighs. He remembers that very first night, when he was working himself over like a fucking professional and all Blaine could do was watch, and wait, and want – he wants this to feel like that. He pushes harder, touches himself more, everywhere. He digs his fingers into the meat of his thigh hard enough that he might even leave marks there. It feels incredible. He buries both hands in his hair and pulls so hard it _hurts_ , and the pain has him crying out, but even his own ears hear it for the moan of pleasure it really is, his hips working his cock hopelessly through empty air, the head of it sliding just a time or two against the smooth, cool glass of the window, streaking it filthy-wet in its wake. Each dirty detail catalogues and stacks in Blaine’s mind, till he’s going _crazy_ , blood burning in his veins, every cell of him buzzing desperately toward release. He wants to be so hot that no one could take their eyes off him if they tried.

One hand finds his cock again and even the sweaty curl of his own palm feels so good where it’s achingly, unbearably hard, so flush and swollen he feels dizzy with the need to sink against something and to come. He tugs on himself harder and turns his face into the crook of his upraised arm, breathing in the smell of his own sex, just for a second until he can’t keep his eyes away from the other man any longer.

And staring straight over at his neighbor – he’s reclining a little on his bed now, rubbing at his erection through painted-on camo pattern jeans, and _staring_ – it’s so easy to pretend that it’s him.  God, what would it be like, their bodies touching, actually _touching_ , his hands in Blaine’s hair, his fist on Blaine’s cock? Hot breath, maybe, on the back of his neck, skin warm and supple-smooth, and that thick erection nudging up at the furl of Blaine’s ass, teasing at more, teasing at _inside_. Maybe his teeth lightly at Blaine’s shoulder, or maybe even not-so-lightly. Maybe filthy words in a low, dark voice against his ear. Maybe they’d still be doing it right here, in front of the window, daring anyone to look up and see how good, how hot they are _together_.

Blaine pretty much whites out after that and the next thing he knows he’s orgasming, come streaking out onto the wall just under the windowsill, hair twisted so tight in his own fingers that some of the strands pull loose, crying out loud into his quiet early-afternoon bedroom. He comes back to reality to the tune of two people at the mouth of the alleyway starting to get into an argument about who’s paying the fare of the cab they just took together, the honest un-sexy grit of the city back at the forefront of his mind again.

And that’s when it hits him, a wave washing over his head that he’s powerless to resist: Blaine just jerked off in full view of the waking world of Queens with barely a second thought. Because that’s who he is now.

It’s…a lot, to try to process, especially when he basically just came his brains out. Blaine leans forward in a slow, unsteady tilt, his breathing getting shakier, and braces his hands on the sill of his window, head bowed just a little – not too much, though, because he has to keep an eye on his neighbor. The man in the other apartment reads him like an open book, offering nothing but a pleased little sultry grin, and a wave of the tips of his fingers as he saunters back out of Blaine’s sight without even finishing off himself.

Blaine rolls to the left, back to his wall right next to the window, and slides slowly down till he’s sitting on the floor. His cock is softening in his lap and the cheap carpet of his bedroom is tickling at his ass, and his breathing’s getting worse, labored, like the room is suddenly eight times hotter and stuffier than it was the moment before. He still doesn’t know what’s happening to him – it’s like the muted, underwater, dark-of-night way he’s been looking at the whole situation finally got blowholed up into open air, and the reality of all that he’s gone through with this other man is soaking him to the bone, mind just kind of reeling, because Blaine just jerked off in full view of the waking world of Queens, all for someone he’s never even really _met_ , and –

And it was the best Blaine’s ever felt in his life.

\--

After that, it’s hard for Blaine to come back down. He throws himself wholly into other things for a few days – he hits his treadmill and his punching bag harder, works his ass off at RockShop, makes as many social engagements as he can stand, and forces himself to sleep through the night rather than getting up and checking his window over and over and over. (That’s how Blaine knows it’s getting so, so much worse – he’s trying to use his life as a distraction from…this, rather than _this_ being a distraction from the rest of his life.) He gets a “girls’ night” with Mercedes and Tina scheduled for Friday, and he insists on them all going out for karaoke. Blaine wants to get wild.

“You’re so _spunky_ lately!” shouts Tina over the noise of some frat boys bumbling through Tubthumping. Even with the words on the screen they pretty much only know the chorus and the part about all the alcohols, most of which they have probably sampled tonight at some point.

“Yeah, gosh, I don’t know, I just wanna go kind of crazy,” Blaine gushes. He’s had a couple himself.

“Well, good. We all need a little good, clean crazy every now and then,” says Mercedes. When the Chumbawamba guys fall apart, the heavily-pierced girl running the roster calls her up next, and she gives them a little wave before stomping up and killing Ring The Alarm. Blaine and Tina get up from their seats and dance to it by their table, hips popping and hair flying. Blaine feels sweat flick off his face. He definitely does not think about the last time he was shaking his ass this much, the last time he _performed_ , the audience he had then. No way.

They do a few more songs – Blaine and Tina laughing their way through Barbie Girl, all three of them showing off on Pink’s So What – and throw back a few more drinks, and then take a break. Tina wants to know if they’re all going to Elliot’s Fourth of July party.

“God, is it really almost July?” says Blaine. “I can’t believe it’s been like two months since you moved out!”

“You promise you don’t miss me too much?” she says, pouting exaggeratedly. “Don’t be lonely, Blaineydays!”

“No way!” says Blaine. “You and Tristan deserve it.”

“Things are going okay in your new place though, right?” says Mercedes. “You gettin’ along with everyone in the building? Any fun neighbors?”

Blaine only chokes on his drink a little bit.

“There’s a girl down the hall I almost invited tonight, actually, she’s got this huge amazing afro and she’s brought us leftovers a couple times,” says Tina. “I think she’s just angling to try to get us to watch her cats sometime, though, and we can’t since Tristan’s so allergic. And there’s this guy that plays his bongos, like, aaaalll the time, it’s so annoying. His name is Reginald, like, seriously, _Reginald_?” She takes a sip of her drink like she needs to be drunker just to even think about it. “Who doesn’t just go by Reggie?”

“That’s officially one of the least sexy names I have ever heard,” says Mercedes.

“Isn’t that weird?” Blaine says suddenly. “How just a _name_ can be hot or not hot?”

“Yeah, definitely, it’s like you never think about – “

“Like what are some sexy names?” Blaine continues. “If you were like, crafting your _dream_ guy – nothing against Sam or Tristan, of course, but just if you were designing an actually perfect boy, with all the things you’d want him to have – “

“Mmmm- _hm_ ,” says Mercedes, giving Blaine a look.

“Well, yeah, so, what would his name be? What’s a name hot enough to go with all of that?”

“Something like…I don’t know, like _Diego_ ,” giggles Tina.

“Ew, no, be serious!”

“Denzel,” says Mercedes.

“Oh, _yeah_ ,” says Tina. “I can’t even imagine an ugly guy named Denzel.”

“Anthony.”

“Levi.”

“Christian – ”

“ – Ew, that’s so Fifty Shades!”

“Marc,” says Blaine. “Like, with a C.”

“Oooh,” the girls both say back.

Blaine can’t help it. It’s been four days, and even here, doing everything he can to drive himself to distraction, his brain finds ways to segue every thought back toward the man in the window opposite his whether he wants to or not. And the thing is, there’s a lot of it that Blaine _does_ want to think about – he needs to parse it over in his head, try to work out exactly what’s happening here, because something is definitely happening. Blaine felt himself walk right up to a line that day and then just waltz right across it, going to a place he’s never been before as if he’s been taking vacations there regularly for years. Their little nighttime “encounters” up to this point, the city dark and sleep-hushed around them, trading glances and touches in the light of the moon and streetlamps and their dim apartments, feel like a little girl trying on her mom’s heels and lipstick compared to Monday afternoon. Blaine was an _animal_ – even as someone who’s always harbored a love of performance, he was like _porn_ , too overwhelmed by the rush and the heat of their exchange to give a damn about anything or any _one_ else. He’s never been like that before in his life. He didn’t even know he _could_ be like that.

There must just be something about the man across the alleyway. That’s the only conclusion Blaine can bring himself to – something about this man just sends Blaine to this _place_.  He hasn’t had what you might call a _lot_ of sexual partners in the past, but there have been enough men that Blaine figured he kind of had a handle on what he likes and doesn’t like, what he can do, what he’s good at doing, where his boundaries begin and end. Surely if Blaine had always been the person he was on Monday it would have surfaced sometime before now. And yet here he is, knocking back drinks with his girlfriends at a karaoke bar, and he should feel blissed out and totally carefree but all he can think about is the hold this man must have over him – the power he must have, to _change_ Blaine, to transform him into something entirely new. Unless…

Unless Blaine _has_ been that person, that animal, this entire time. And maybe it’s only now that he’s finally felt a connection with another person powerful enough to draw that out of him and into – metaphorically and _literally –_ the daylight.

If it’s the former, that’s certainly something, and if it’s the latter that’s _definitely something_ – Blaine’s starting to realize, either way, that he’s totally fucked. Because even though he still has no idea where he wants this whole situation to go, more and more he knows that it’s got to go _somewhere_. Every element of that day is etched deep into his memory – some bits of it are etched into his _skin,_ little red fingertip marks that still smart with pain – and as he pores over it again and again, his mind keeps catching and sticking on his fantasy of the other man beside him, behind him, inside him. In the dark, the here-and-now was always enough, getting off to how hot it was to be watching each other get off, caressing with eyes only. But if Blaine starts imagining them together, really _together_ –

If Blaine’s imagining _Marc-with-a-C_ , who works nights and dresses fabulously –

_(He’s a photographer, he’s a Cancer, I can totally get his number for you if you want)_ –

“Blaine, it’s your turn, you’re up!” Tina shoves at his leg and he snaps out of it, looks up to see Piercings Girl eyeing him expectantly now that that middle-aged blonde is done butchering Pat Benatar. He hops up and flashes her an apologetic smile – and then, spur of the moment, makes a choice. He was down for a Neon Trees song but something makes him change. Something’s been making Blaine change a lot lately.

He can’t pretend not to see the looks Tina’s giving him as he tears into When I Get You Alone.

\--

Blaine starts playing a new game with himself, though not one that’s necessarily any more “fun” than the “what’s wrong with _him_ ” game – he tries to tell himself they’re games, anyway, so that it seems cuter and less crazy. He calls this one the “Allen the Hot TA game.” And even when he’s not trying to – like here at the bodega grocer, looking for the best veggies for the skewers he’s bringing to Fourth of July – he plays it all the time.

Marc-with-a-C, for example, is a bouncer at an alternative gentleman’s club, where he’s beautiful enough that creeps don’t take him seriously, and they underestimate how that marble-muscled body can kick their asses if they mess with the performers the wrong way, because he secretly knows like four martial arts. His favorite color is silver, and while he likes the work at the club, he really wants to get into modeling. Maybe Blaine can put in a good word for him with Sam’s agency. Marc fucks Blaine hard, efficient, can probably get him right in the prostate every time, always makes sure Blaine comes first. He’s the one from Monday afternoon.

Or, checking for bruising on a bell pepper – Anthony is a server at a very upscale restaurant. He likes to wear all those avant-garde, fashionable outfits whenever he can because the uniform at the restaurant is boring and unflattering (though with his killer looks he of course makes it work). He flirts easily with both men and women to secure the biggest tips, because he needs the money to put himself through graduate school to become a writer. His tattoo is a quote from his favorite poem, something by Neruda or Siken that curled around his heart one day and never let go. He hates to be called Tony but secretly loves West Side Story. He’d make slow and intimate love to Blaine with Blaine on top, probably, gazing into his eyes, luxurious like that first night in May.

Or, eyeing the organic squash and trying to decide if he can afford it – Christian stays out late every night to hit as many open mics as he can, scrambling to make a name for himself as a singer in the big city. He moved into the new place when his roommate ditched him because he couldn’t stand listening to Christian sing every waking hour of the day and on into the night. He’s so anal-retentive about it that he dropped out of school early to focus on making it big as a star, and his well-to-do parents (who live somewhere in the Midwest, like Blaine’s, of course) support him financially so he doesn’t have to work because they think the sun shines out of his (more perfect than Blaine could ever describe) ass. Christian’s so into Blaine that he always comes twice, his refractory period crazy short, his blowjobs out of this world – the man with the green dildo.

Blaine realizes he’s been fondling this squash kind of suggestively and nearly drops it. Then, suddenly, his phone is buzzing sharp and loud in his pocket, and he actually drops it. He curses softly to himself as he tries to pick it up, tucking it into his basket as nonchalantly as possible, hoping no one saw. That’s funny – it’s work. He just left.

“What’s up, Rosco?”

But it’s not Rosco. “Ander _sonnn_ , hey,” says Danny, and Blaine’s stomach drops down closer to his ankles. “How’s things?”

“Uh, fine, Danny, what’s going on?”

“Not much with me, man. Okay, but here’s the thing, is, I’m looking at our intake reports from last week, and something’s kind of not matching up.”

“What do you mean?” Blaine very firmly does not let his voice tremble, doesn’t stutter, remains professional and level-headed. He does start pacing the aisles of the bodega, though, wandering far away from the fresh vegetables and kind of sort of trying to hide, even through the phone.

“It took me a while to pin it down, but we were short about sixty dollars from what we should be considering what moved out of stock, and what it ended up being up was that these electronic tuners were being sold for fifteen bucks less than list price. What’s the story on that?”

Tuners, tuners – fuck. Blaine remembers the tuners. He remembers paying absolutely no attention to the tuners while doing Sunday restock because Bernie was bothering him about hot TAs and his own mind was worlds away in the apartment building next to his own. _Fuck_.

“I think I must have mis-tagged them and they were selling for the wrong price,” Blaine admits. “I’m so sorry, this is totally my fault.”

“Well, hey, since it’s totally your fault, I think it’s gonna come out of totally your paycheck,” says Danny, and Blaine winces so hard that a woman walking past gives him a sympathetic smile. “That cool with you, Anderson? You gonna get your head out of your ass and put the right price tags on stuff next time instead of wasting my time and my money?”

“Yes, sir,” says Blaine. Fuck, he needed that sixty dollars.

“You gotta know that if this had been Mitchell or Juarez they’d be fired right now,” Danny says. Blaine winces again – Rosco is probably standing right there, and probably heard that, and that probably makes him feel just _awesome_. “You gotta know that, Anderson, you hear me? I’m gonna be in the store a lot more this week and I got my eye on you. Please don’t make me regret this.”

“I won’t, I definitely won’t, I promise.” He’s wandered all the way into the cereal aisle now, palms sweaty on his phone and the handle of his basket. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome. Take care.” Danny hangs up, and Blaine’s grateful for it.

_Fuck_. He definitely cannot afford this organic summer squash now. He probably can’t afford to buy any food for a party because he’s going to need to be able to buy, like, his own groceries. This is like the hi-hats all over again, with much more serious consequences – the blow to his paycheck, sure, but also the blow to his psyche in the form of _this is the second time this has happened_. Blaine’s thoughts are slowly but surely becoming so consumed by Marc/Christian/Anthony that the things that are important to his continued everyday functionality are getting shoved to the wayside. He is going to lose his job at this rate, and then he won’t be able to afford his apartment and he’ll have to move in with Mercedes and Sam and cockblock his best friend all the time and he won’t even live across the alley from his anonymous dream lover any more, and how’s that for dramatic irony?

Or, well, just dramatics. Blaine forces himself to take a deep breath and focus, reining in his tendency to follow a train of thought to its bitter end. He’s smart and competent enough that he’s not going to lose his job. Even if he did, he’d find a way to make ends meet, and anyway he’d much rather move in with Tristan and Tina. Right now, he just needs to make more frugal vegetable choices, focus on Fourth of July with his friends, and try to stop playing the miserable Allen the Hot TA Game with himself, at least not until it’s three a.m. and he’s looking out his bedroom window and dreaming of the day that something gives.

Man, something’s gotta give.

Blaine wiggles his phone back into the snug pocket of his pants, scrubs a hand over his face, and steps back out of the cereal aisle to return his fumbled squash to the stack and maybe grab some cheap little baby onions, and one fat carrot instead of his extra bell pepper. He’s turning the corner back to produce, eyes on the prize, and instead of looking at green vegetables Blaine’s suddenly looking right at obscenely tight oxblood-red jeans cupping around a flawless ass that even in pants he’s only a little bit ashamed to admit that he would recognize anywhere and his head reels and he immediately turns around, bolts back out of sight because –

That’s him. Marc-with-a-C or _whoever_ he is is right here in Blaine’s bodega grocer, because of course, they live right next door to one another, why wouldn’t they be shopping at the same grocery store? And of course he’s just having a delightful summer day out – Blaine hears a _laugh_ and it can’t be anyone else, oh god, his voice is warm and clear and _high_ , not anything like Blaine imagined but still so beautiful even not speaking real words. Everything is beautiful about him, really, even in just that fraction of a glimpse Blaine managed before hiding behind this shelf of beans and rice and vegetables in jars, except for one shockingly hideous thing:

The man with the glasses standing next to him, arm curled tight and sweet around his waist, gesturing goofily at him with a pineapple.

Because never once in Blaine’s dozens or hundreds or thousands of made-up scenarios did the man across the alleyway ever already have a boyfriend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I want to make sure to apologize to anyone who was triggered or upset by the not-warned-for infidelity situation. I know that it’s typically in better taste to warn for that but because it was such a pivotal plot point I erred on the side of not “spoiling” myself, and I hope that in this circumstance that is forgivable. I don't do tragic endings so I promise it'll all be okay eventually! Thanks so much for bearing with me!)


	4. Chapter 4

Blaine’s out of the grocery as fast as he can go, barely remembering to even pay for his veggies and wine coolers as he flees the scene and only stopping when it occurs to him that the last thing he needs on top of the rest of today is a shoplifting arrest. He has to run all the way home even in the nasty heat of a fresh July, has to ground himself on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, smearing sweat up into the curling edges of his hair where his gel is weakening in the humidity, catching a spot under his jaw that he missed shaving, trying to block out the world – like maybe if he presses down and in on his own head, his gear-grinding thoughts will stay in there and make more sense, rather than trying to fly all over the place and escape – because –

A boyfriend. A _boyfriend_. There’s no mistaking the relationship dynamic he just saw between his late-night alleyway paramour and the man standing there with him, easy affection visible between them, touching casually and huddling close. Blaine can’t believe he’s been driving himself crazy – can’t believe he’s mere steps away from getting _fired –_ over a guy who already has a boyfriend.

He feels like he’s losing his mind, like he’s flying apart at the seams. After all that he’s put himself through for this man – all he’s discovered about him, all he’s discovered about _himself_ – this discovery feels like some kind of sick joke. Blaine’s already redefined the boundaries of his own reality so much over what they’ve been sharing here, and now he’s going to have to do it all over again, adding this other factor into the mix and, ultimately, extracting himself back out.

Because he’s going to have to stop. The more the hard facts of the situation sink in – Blaine’s been having sex with someone who already has a boyfriend, and the boyfriend most likely doesn’t know – the more the sick, agitated feeling starts to crawl down from Blaine’s brain and into his stomach, leaving him nauseated and tense, just as guilty as he’d felt after the accidental perving that started this whole thing. Cheating. Blaine’s been aiding in his gorgeous neighbor _cheating_ on this guy with the glasses, who’s probably a totally cool person, who doesn’t deserve any of the turmoil that being cheated on puts you through – the way the doubt and suspicion eat into the rest of your life until nothing seems real, the embarrassment and shame, the _fear_ , the distrust…

Yeah, Blaine knows all of that firsthand. His one and only high school boyfriend Sebastian certainly saw to that.

Blaine can’t be complicit in this. Unless he gets some solid truth about the whole situation – which, considering they’ve never even _spoken to each other_ before, seems pretty fucking unlikely – he can’t allow it to go on. And if that means quitting their “encounters” cold turkey, Blaine will do it. He gets up off the sofa, stands square and resolute with his hands clenched in fists at his sides, and sets his jaw in a promise to himself. Then he actually bothers to put away the groceries he just threw onto the kitchen counter when he slammed into the apartment a few minutes ago. He lingers in the cool of the refrigerator for a few long seconds and lets it wash over him, tries to clear up the hot, muggy fog his thoughts had disintegrated into.

Because why is there still some tiny, crumbled part of Blaine’s brain – or maybe something deeper still – that feels even sadder, even sicker, that feels like maybe –

Like _Blaine’s_ the one who’s been getting cheated on…?

\--

Blaine feels the change acutely, and immediately.

As uncomfortable as the idea of still seeing his anonymous neighbor for their early-morning “encounters” makes Blaine now, it doesn’t mean that cutting him out completely is exactly _comfortable_. He’s amazed – and kind of frightened, really – that something he barely had for a month can leave such an emptiness in its wake when it’s gone again. It’s like going on the nastiest, crashiest diet. Blaine still stirs awake almost nightly at three or four a.m., body adjusted to the schedule even without an alarm, and in his half-sleep his eyes and even his cock will twitch over toward his bedroom window. Once already he’s had to abandon his room entirely and sleep on his own sofa. His body had also adjusted to frequent, regular orgasms, and depriving himself makes him grumpy and jittery. He’s surprised, but supposes he shouldn’t be, when it’s already enough to be outwardly noticeable at Elliot’s rooftop barbecue four days later.

“Heyyy, what’s got your boyshorts in a twist?” asks Elliot, plopping down in the empty chair next to Blaine and knocking his knee into Blaine’s own. He realizes it’s been jigging up and down, bouncing on the ball of his feet with his heel clicking into the gravel of the roof. Blaine says “ _nothing_ ” on a reflex, trying not to immediately go on the defensive and only kind of succeeding.

He takes another swig of his beer and Elliot does the same; Blaine can tell neither of them is sure how to move forward.

“Look, honey,” Elliot finally says. “We’re the same, like this – ” He chuckles. “I remember in college when everyone would get so excited to snag a single room in the housing lottery. But I was always like – what’s so bad about having a roommate? You and me, we don’t do well with loneliness. Don’t rattle around too hard in that apartment of yours. Get happy, and _relax_. All your friends are here – we’re here for you.”

Blaine looks around the party, at everyone present – Sam and Mercedes, Tina and Tristan, Elliot and Rian. A couple girls from Mercedes’s jazz club ensemble, both with boyfriends. Elliot’s next-door-apartment neighbor Dani and her new girlfriend, a leggy Latina. And Blaine, in this deck chair, tense and disoriented. Surrounded by friends, and yet.

It’s kind of occurring to Blaine, now, that despite what he may have thought, despite this strange inside piece of him that feels like he’s locked it up tight and shoved it in a corner, he and his mystery neighbor are just that: a mystery, to one another. And that considering they’ve never spoken to one another, and it’s unlikely that they ever will, cutting out their sexual encounters like this basically means –

Never seeing or hearing from him again. At all.

Blaine forces a laugh and says, “I think I need another beer.” Elliot doesn’t argue with him, and they get up and rejoin the party, where Sam is telling some outrageous story that involves him tugging wildly on his own long-grown hair, and Candie (or is it Corinne? Blaine can never keep them straight) is laughing so hard she’s doubled over, arms wrapped across her stomach. Rian pops back up from downstairs with some more hot dogs to grill up, and also two huge boxes of sparklers for later. Tina gives him an air-cheek-kiss and hands him the bottle opener. Blaine’s surrounded by friends.

And yet – alone.

\--

July 14th is the hottest day of the summer so far, the sun absolutely _brutal_ , and Blaine makes the decision to buy himself some new curtains for his bedroom to block it out.

They’re a really nice blue color, and are totally, definitely for the sun and the heat and the glare, and the noise and lights of the fire trucks at night, and not for blocking out anything else.

\--

Blaine cocks back and _wham!_ lands a hard side blow with his right fist, feels it shake up to his elbow and revels in it. It comes back to this:

_Why would he start something like this if he has a boyfriend?_

A flurry of fast jabs and the bag’s chain rattles. The right again. Then the left.

_Why wouldn’t he just –_ tell _me somehow? Why just assume it wouldn’t bother me?_

It’s been three weeks, and July is almost over. Three weeks and Blaine still can’t manage to jerk off without his behind-the-eyes fantasy images morphing into the beautiful, ethereal man who lives across the alleyway from him, even if he starts off on his tried-and-true go-tos of Adam Levine or Tom Hardy or Brendon Urie in the Girls/Girls/Boys video. And every time, the guilt and general awfulness he feels about having sex with a man who’s already in a relationship –

He swings hard into the bag –

– god, it’s like the way he’d felt that first night all over again. Only this time, instead of the scuzziness of peeping and perving on a potentially-unreceptive guy, it’s the scuzziness of deceiving someone, the remnants of his own past lingering in the back of his head in a way that he can’t manage to blot –

(or punch – )

– out.

He can never finish off like that, and it leaves him antsy and unsatisfied, which is when this vicious mental cycle usually winds up depositing him here at the gym.

_Was I just supposed to assume he had a boyfriend already? Does he think_ I _have a boyfriend?_

A left jab, then three hard right hooks. Blaine flexes his fingers as much as he can inside the gloves – tries to keep them loose, the impossible life of a boxer who still also sort of wants to maybe play instruments – and tries to picture his neighbor’s face now, instead of when he’s trying to get off, right there on the bag as he swings at it. But that’s not really fair, he supposes. He tries to call to mind the boyfriend’s face instead but that’s not fair at all either. None of this is _fair_. It’s not anyone’s fault that Blaine can’t feel anything but terrible about this, not even Sebastian’s, although picturing _his_ face on the punching bag is the most satisfying thing he’s attempted yet.

“Of course he has a boyfriend, he’s _beautiful_!” Blaine yells, pummeling the shit out of the bag until he can’t any more, breath coming hard and sweat spattering off his nose and brow and chin. That’s what hurts the most, Blaine thinks – of course he does. He can’t believe he was even surprised.

The only other person in the room, a tiny girl built like a brick who’s been kickboxing away at a bag in the opposite corner, pauses and snorts at him. “Ain’t that always the truth.”

\--

Blaine knows it’s bad when even Bernadette starts noticing.

“Doesn’t he need to get _laid_?” she says to Tina, who pops in to bring Blaine lunch while running an errand in RockShop’s neighborhood. “Tina, please tell him he needs to get laid.”

“I mean, he probably does,” Tina says solemnly. “But that would require him to have, like, a real boyfriend. Blaineydays here doesn’t do ‘just sex.’”

Blaine’s brow furrows. “Um, not that I’m super-keen to be discussing my bedroom life in the workplace,” he says, snatching his takeout bag (ooh, she went to that pan-Asian place) from Tina’s grip before she can do some dumb teasing thing with it, “but – says who? You don’t think I’m capable of it?”

Tina rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. The last time we tried to get you to go home with a guy from the club, you acted like we’d asked you to shave your head.”

“Tina, that guy _had_ a shaved head,” says Blaine. “And like, forty tattoos. And a pet _scorpion_ , which he brought up no fewer than three times while he was buying me drinks.” He snaps his cheapo wooden chopsticks apart. “Find me someone who doesn’t look like he’s gonna ask me to put the lotion in the basket and there are way more cards on the table.”

“Remember when Allen the Hot TA was on the table?” mutters Bernie.

Tina gasps. “Who? Tell me!”

“A _super_ hot down home country boy who TAs for one of my classes that Blaine _could_ have been getting laid _from_ only now he’s dating a senior dance major with a quote-unquote ‘ass that won’t quit,’ so.”

“Oh my god,” says Blaine, throwing his free hand up and stepping away from the register, suddenly furious at Bernie for even mentioning him. He will spend his lunch break in the goddamn inventory closet if that’s what it takes to get away from these two.

“Blaine! He sounds amazing! What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?” he says, whirling on them. “Why is my sex life – why is my _life_ – such a huge deal to you guys? Can’t I just be in kind of a lousy mood for no reason, and I’ll work through it on my own, and we’ll leave it at that?”

“Wow, okay, sorry for trying to be your friend and looking out for you – “

“I’m an adult, Tina,” he says, over-enunciating and sounding like a jerk even to his own ears but he just does not _care_ any more. “I’m perfectly capable of looking out for myself.”

It’s almost a hundred degrees outside, but he takes his fold-up container of vegetable noodles to the bench outside the barber shop next door, and eats there instead, squinting into the sun.

What does Tina know about his sex life, about what he does and doesn’t “do”? He may not have much of a history of one-night stands or casual sex – okay, he may not have _any_ history there – but he can chalk that up to his standards of _personal hygiene_ almost just as much as standards for relationships. And she has no idea – if only they had any _idea_ that the reason he’s been so irritable, the reason maybe he could do with _getting laid_ , is that he’s been having a great deal of really awesome sex that was “just sex,” only for it to be ripped away from him in a cruel, heartbreaking way because his standards definitely extend to “don’t be the guy someone’s cheating on his boyfriend with.”

It occurs to Blaine, around a mouthful of broccoli, that maybe people with a little bit more of a history of casual sex would not think of a casual-sex relationship’s sudden end as “heartbreaking.” But “dickbreaking” sounds stupid – he laughs to himself just thinking it, and feels a little better – and it makes way more sense just to assume that it’s his lack of experience rather than a possibility that somehow, somewhere inside of himself, Blaine might have feelings for a guy he’s probably never going to see again that go beyond “just sex.”

Because they’ve never even really met, and that would be downright impossible.

When Blaine heads back inside, finally needing air conditioning more than the last word, Tina’s already gone and Bernadette’s looking subdued. He can’t quite bring himself to apologize to her just yet, but he offers her one of his little khao tom mat and she accepts it, and they don’t bring it back up for the rest of the day.

His shift is just about to end and he’s grateful to be heading home and trying to get his head back on his shoulders when she stops him. “Wait, hang on. Did you forget to schedule a performer for this block?”

Blaine cringes in panic for a moment – oh god, not _another_ work mistake, he just got rid of Danny’s constant hovering last week and he cannot afford this – but as he runs through the “work stuff” sections in his brain he has a distinct memory of it, and frowns. “No, I definitely did. Check the roster?”

There’s a name there, all right, _Jessy Louise on guitar_ , but her set was supposed to start twelve minutes ago and there’s no sign of her. Bernie shrugs. “Huh. Wonder where she went. We can’t get in trouble for this, can we? If Danny walks by unannounced and nothing’s going on?”

“I mean, I guess not,” says Blaine, but god, she had to _say_ something, and his emotions are already running high and the panic is coming back. “Um, but just in case, I could hop up and do a couple, probably.”

“Really?” Bernie’s face twists into a smile. “I haven’t heard you perform in a super long time, you almost never do it any more!”

“Uh, yeah,” says Blaine, a little uneasy. He doesn’t, really. He also doesn’t really like to talk about it – it’s better and easier to focus on the other, more important things that are going on, like being solid in his life and good at his job, being a Real Adult. It’s only rare little moments like these where the two overlap.

“You totally should!” insists Bernie. “You want anything, guitar, harmonica – “

“House keyboard is fine,” he says. He crosses over to the cabinet near the door where the house keyboard and its stand usually sit, tugs them out, sets them up, plugs it in. The motions are automatic and kind of soothing, and he stands there and stretches his fingers over the keys, trying to come up with somewhere to begin.

“ _I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin…”_ Blaine murmurs to himself, and his fingers find the notes before he’s even really thinking about it, and it’s strange without his buddies as backup singers but for the first time in years, Blaine performs Somewhere Only We Know.

By the end of it Bernie has grabbed a tambourine from the back room and started playing laughingly along from the inside of the store, and Blaine laughs at her, too, waving his hand as an _oh, stop_. He switches gears to some Queen and tries not to sound so pathetic, and a couple songs later, people are hovering around the open storefront window, jamming out and texting friends, one of them even filming him on a tiny phone camera. Blaine grins at her around some Billy Joel lyrics and is amazed to discover that he still has a little something inside of him that just feels _better_ when he’s performing – like he’s kind of almost _important_ , like people care about him, like he isn’t as alone as maybe he thought. His fingers on the piano may be clumsy from doing more punching than playing lately, his arrangements more bare-bones than they would’ve been in school when he thought about little other than music all the time, but this is clicking something back open in him, somehow, something wild and organic and unrestrained, that’s been sealed shut tight since –

Well, since the last time he was _performing,_ across his side alleyway to an audience of one.

As usual, Blaine tries to put _that_ out of his mind, and he’s happy to find that it almost works. He’s not okay yet – Somewhere Only We Know kind of hit a little closer to home than he was expecting – but maybe, sometime soon, he feels like he could be.

He’s feeling that way all the way up until the rock clatters against his window Tuesday evening.

\--

Blaine looks up from whatever article he’s been reading on his tablet, and freezes. His blinds and curtains are all the way closed, a barrier against the glaring sun of a July that’s turning into a just-as-nasty August, and thinks, maybe he imagined the noise. Or maybe it was just an accident, a bird or something, there’s no way it –

A second _clack!_ follows the first one, sharp and deliberate, and it’s like it’s rattling on Blaine’s chest and not just the window the way it spikes through him. Still, he forces his attention back to the article. If it is – even _if it is_ – Blaine is going to be the adult, the responsible one, the honest one, and ignore it. He won’t let himself get sucked back into a deception he wants no part of.

Except for – he wants a whole lot of parts of this. And the third time something hits the window – not even the window this time, Blaine thinks, the sound is too dull, it’s more of a clank-thud off the exterior of his bedroom wall – Blaine is up like a shot, tablet discarded on his bed, drawing the curtains aside and then fumbling for the cord to tug the blinds up and open, squinting into the orange haze of the sunset across to where the man in the opposite apartment has just tugged his own window neatly shut, a homemade-looking but honest-to-god slingshot still dangling from one hand. The bright light of the setting sun paints across his strong, fey features like he’s an actual work of art and Blaine’s breath snatches right out of his throat.

He thought he’d never see him again.

Blaine swallows, and shifts a little, trying to settle but profoundly _un_ settled by seeing this beautiful man with his own eyes again after such a long stint of seeing him only in his sad, unbidden thoughts. He wets his lips, a couple times, mouth working as he tries to figure out what to say, even as he’s remembering that his neighbor won’t be able to hear him at all. He finally just gives a half shrug of one shoulder, like, _well, okay, and?_

The man’s own shoulders sag a little, a sigh, maybe, and then he ducks to the side and bends (and Blaine tries not to stare at his ass, god don’t stare at his ass, fuck but he’s _stunning_ ) and comes back with – a spiral notebook, and a thick blue permanent marker. He scrawls something quickly for a second and then holds it up to the window like he’s Taylor Swift. His handwriting is curled and graceful, but his penmanship looks sloppy, like maybe he thought the faster he wrote it the faster he could get it out of himself and over to Blaine. It says,

_I SAW YOU RUNNING FROM THE STORE THAT DAY_

Blaine blinks, a little, trying both to remember and not to remember. After a minute he nods in the affirmative. _Go on_.

His neighbor turns a page and writes more. _I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU_.

“How?” Blaine whispers to himself. “Like this?” His eyes dart around his room, suddenly anxious to respond, but he definitely doesn’t have a notebook and a marker just casually laying around for stuff like this. His best bet is – he grabs his tablet from his bed and pulls up a note-taking app, types up a couple words, magnifies them as far as it will go.

**WOULD YOU REALLY?**

His neighbor squints a little to read, then frowns, nodding sharply as an _Of course_ and gesturing with the notebook for emphasis. He quickly writes a little bit more, but it’s taking longer, and he holds up a hand as if to say, _wait for it, wait_. The next message is a couple pages and he has to turn them in the middle.

_WE’RE HAVING FUN RIGHT?_

_AND I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD GO ON THIS LONG_

_BUT YOU’RE INCREDIBLE_

And a winky face. Blaine is flattered – they _were_ having a lot of fun, and he can’t say he didn’t like it, can’t say the praise now and the admiration before, the acknowledgement, the _audience_ , hasn’t made him feel like he believes it, like maybe he _is_ incredible. But when he considers the whole situation, he still feels a little sick, from the guilt and from just how tumultuous his whole path to recovery and then dramatic plummet back into the thick of it has been. He feels like a chain-smoker one month clean who’s being offered an expensive cigarette from the most beautiful man in the universe. It’s killing him. But he can’t say no.

He types up a response on his tablet, feeling awkward when he can only fit a word or two on each line and he has to slowly scroll down when the other man prompts him, a _keep going keep going_ curl of his hand.

**YOU ARE TOO**  
**(INCREDIBLE)**  
 **BUT I DON’T**  
 **EXACTLY HAVE**  
 **ANYTHING**  
 **ELSE GOING**  
 **ON RIGHT NOW**  
 **AND I WOULD**  
 **HAVE TOLD YOU**

He taps the edge of the screen next to the last two words for emphasis, and hopes that the hurt is clear enough on his face without being cheesy and overdone. Because it _did_ hurt – once Blaine stopped being irritable and angry, it kind of mellowed out to this dull ache, the realization that someone who’s become so central to Blaine’s life is someone he knows so little about that he didn’t even know _this_. But his beautiful neighbor looks properly chagrined, and hangs his head apologetically, writing a little more slowly on his notebook now, a couple things on a couple more pages.

_I’M SORRY._

The period makes it sound more serious somehow, and when he shows it, he makes sure Blaine looks at _him,_ not just at the notebook, and wiggles his fingers in a tiny mimic of a wave before moving his hand to his chest, just over his heart. Blaine remembers the gesture, so clear and sharp in his mind from the first time it happened, and repeats it back, a wave and then an open palm. It’s warm and sweet and cuts through a lot of his confusion. Maybe they’re on the same page after all.

Speaking of pages – there’s more. Blaine tries to snap back to attention as the papers turn over and he sees the new sign.

_BUT, I DON’T WANT TO STOP_

_IF YOU DON’T._

He looks so _hopeful_ that Blaine kind of can’t breathe, and god, okay, Blaine definitely doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t want to _have_ to stop, would definitely not ever have stopped in literally any other set of circumstances. The shirt the other man is wearing is a white so pale and thin that Blaine thinks he can see right through it, and his body aches for the dips and planes of him, looking so stunning in the light of the setting sun that, like so many times in the past, Blaine barely believes he’s real. But – and Blaine types it out on his tablet, holds it up, shakes his head –

**I WON’T HELP  
YOU CHEAT**

The other man’s reaction is frantic and immediate. He waves his arms _no no no no!_ and writes faster than ever on the notebook, blue ink smearing, the longest message so far:

_IT’S NOT LIKE THAT_

_HAVEN’T TOLD HIM BUT_

_WE DISCUSSED BEFORE_

_RLTNSHP IS OPEN (FOR SEX) B/C_

_HE’S AWAY SO MUCH FOR WORK_

_I JUST NEVER TOLD HIM_

_SINCE….WELL_

He pauses and shrugs a little, smiles a little, gestures a little, to indicate their situation. Then, a few more pages:

_AND BECAUSE I LIKED IT_

_THAT IT WAS SECRET_

_THAT IT WAS MINE_

Blaine watches as he underlines “mine” a couple times for emphasis without even lowering the notebook, a teacher writing on a blackboard. The marker’s still kind of pointing at the word even as their gazes drift, their eyes lock, staring at each other with this kind of inscrutable understanding hanging in the alleyway between them. Because – Blaine didn’t tell anyone either. Blaine liked keeping it a secret, too. Because what do you even _say_ …? And if it’s just sex – and if it’s _not_ cheating, not really, private but not forbidden, secretive but not _deceitful_ , then maybe that could be enough. Maybe Blaine can unpack his own nasty cheating baggage out of this situation and turn it back into something good, that doesn’t still creep into the edges of his dreams at night and occasionally make him want to just punch stuff really hard, and maybe…

Slowly, shakily, Blaine writes on his tablet one word, his blood racing just a little bit hotter with each of the five letters he types out, and hotter still as he holds it up in front of his chest so his neighbor can read it, the tremble creeping into his wrist. He watches the other man’s mouth murmur the shape of the word as he reads it.

**YOURS**

His lips linger half-open for a moment as he studies on Blaine, standing in front of his window like no time has passed and they’ve been going along like they were those first few weeks the whole time, and he doesn’t even look down at the notebook as he writes, too busy _staring_ at Blaine, at every part of him:

_TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF_

It’s like Blaine’s been fighting with himself, and now – the war is over. That same little piece in Blaine’s chest unspools itself and suddenly he doesn’t need to be told twice. He tosses the tablet gently back onto his bed but then his fingers are _flying_ down the buttons of his short-sleeve Oxford, and he has to try not to bump against his nipples too much as he moves because he’s already so turned on he can’t stand it and he barely even _noticed,_ surely it’s been happening this whole time but it just crept up on him while he was staring and thinking and mending every break this whole situation smashed into him – he’s done with the shirt now, and starting in on his belt and his shorts. In no time at all he’s in just underwear, grabbing at himself through his boxers, wanting to make sure he doesn’t miss a second of what his strange, confusing-as-hell, _gorgeous_ neighbor is doing in the window opposite.

He’s not getting naked, which really kind of bums Blaine out in the most petulant little way, but he does tug his skintight jeans down over his ass a little to get his cock out, long and hard and mouthwateringly pink, his thumb rolling over the head and his whole body making the tiniest, prettiest little hitches up into his own grasp. Blaine can just barely see a smear of blue ink on the side of his index finger from his notebook scribbling and it makes him laugh, the noise almost startling him as it bubbles happily from his chest. God, he hadn’t realized how much he missed this.

Blaine quickly tugs his desk chair over to the window and sits in it loose-limbed and open, thighs spread enough that the other man can see the bulge in his boxers, arms lifted just out of the way. He projects _how do you want me?_ from all of himself. He wants nothing more in this moment than to be what the other man wants, to see him _wanting_ something, proof that he’s missed this just as much as Blaine. Yeah, they’re “having fun.” But it’s a kind of fun neither one of them is going to give up again without a fight. Blaine’s hard as a rock and nothing is going to get him off harder right now than seeing this other man turned on and desperate all because of _him_.

For some seconds the man doesn’t react, transfixed and still beyond the slightest shuffle of his hand against his fattening cock as he drinks Blaine in. Blaine, losing patience, lifts one hand up to massage at his own nipple, the sensation lancing straight down to his cock and sending his hips humping up off the seat of the chair, the fabric of his boxers catching in the damp where his cock is leaking against them and snagging the barest tease over his cockhead. And that seems to do it – the man across the alley _clenches_ , his whole body curling in toward his cock and his grip on himself tightening, and he shoves his other hand against his mouth to stifle whatever beautiful noise he must have been about to make. The memory of his voice, his high bright laughter, flares to life in the back of Blaine’s mind where he’s buried it since that miserable day. He tries to run that rich, clear sound through the filter of _sex moan_ and the audio that conjures in his head is so erotic that Blaine himself is moaning, twisting, yanking off his underwear because he can’t take it any more.

He shoots his sexy neighbor another look, questioning – okay, _demanding_ this time, where are they going, what are they doing, what next – and in return, he lifts his hand (with no little difficulty, it looks like) from his cock, raises both hands together to about chest height where he’s sitting down, and makes a round, cupping gesture, fingers twitching in a pantomime squeeze there at the very end of it. Blaine flushes from his cheekbones all down his neck and chest. Yes, okay, his ass. He spins the desk chair sideways and gets up on his knees in the seat, backwards a little, chest to the back of it and feet sticking out the front but turned so he can still see. He braces one arm across the top of the seat-back and traces his other hand – his “downstage” hand, he thinks, with a little giggle – over the curve of his ass, thumbing hard at his own skin. His eyebrows shoot the question back over. _Now what?_

“Now what” is that mystery neighbor has his right hand back on his straining erection and the middle and ring fingers of his left hand shoved as far as they will go into his mouth. Blaine swears loudly to himself and rolls his hips forward without even thinking, the wet head of his cock dragging against the shoddy faux-leather of the back of his chair, and quickly brings his own fingers to his mouth to do the same. He can’t decide which he thinks is fucking _hotter_ in this moment: the fantasy of that lithe, gorgeous man pushing his fingers deeper and deeper into Blaine’s mouth, what the taste of him must be like, the smell, the calluses of his hand – or Blaine himself, sliding his own fingers slow, careful but _relentless_ in past those pink, sinful lips, and the man in the other apartment practically blowing them, tongue swirling and so, so wet, getting Blaine ready to work himself open for him –

Yeah, that’s definitely where this is going. Blaine’s eyes roll back in his head and he feels like he might cry, a little, from how _hot_ this is, _god_ he’d missed this – but he tries to focus on making sure he can still watch everything that’s happening in the window across from his own. The other man twirls his spit-sticky hand just so in a desperate _come on hurry up_ plea, his other hand on his cock flying faster, his movements tight and small and frantic. Blaine pulls his fingers slow and lush out of his own mouth just to watch his neighbor’s jaw drop open with lust – the rush Blaine gets from knowing he can do that is insane – and then dips them down, down from his sacrum and into the dark hot space between the cheeks of his ass, nerve endings flaring and sparking to full attention, his cock going impossibly harder. The other man has his hand back to his mouth again, stifling up his cries, his whole body strung bowstring-taut and his movements still small but frenzied over his heavy cock. It’s funny, because Blaine has never seen him be so quiet and contained before.

With his middle finger swirling and pressing over his own asshole, Blaine watches the other man, as he startles, cranes his neck to the side and back, and seems to shout something over his shoulder.

Someone else is in the apartment.

The boyfriend with the glasses is in the apartment.

Blaine jolts so hard his fingertip breaches up inside, and he screams _fuck!_ out loud to his own empty apartment, the chair squeaking loud and hard on its frame. That’s what the deal is, why his neighbor is jerking off fully clothed and forcing himself quiet while naked Blaine works himself ragged across the street. The whole time they’ve been fooling around, the whole time Blaine’s been gulping every glimpse and tease and hand signal down like water in a desert, the fucking _boyfriend_ has been right there on, presumably, the other side of the bedroom door. Blaine cranes over the back of his desk chair and _sobs_ , so turned on he can’t _breathe_ right, working first one and then two fingers up inside of his hairtrigger-sensitive hole and letting his fantasy run rampant –

They’re together in the neighboring bedroom, that wide bed with the dusk-blue sheets, and the beautiful porcelain man who lives there has Blaine bent over against the headboard with two fingers plunging into him, working his rim and his prostate and every part of Blaine that sings to be touched by someone so sensual. His other hand is cupped tight over Blaine’s mouth to keep him silent, and he bows over Blaine’s back, that long lush cock rutting along Blaine’s hip, and whispers a hot _shhhh_ right down against his ear and the back of his neck, breath standing Blaine’s hair on end, because one room over, some poor sap who has no idea that they’re having the best sex this world has ever seen is puttering around his daily life like it’s just another Tuesday night.

Blaine’s balls seize up, his ass furls tighter around his fingers and he comes so hard he sees stars, lolling back and nearly falling out of the chair, catching himself just in time to spare injury but not quick enough to keep from spurting his come _all over_ the damn chair and making a huge mess. To settle back upright in the chair he has to sit in some of it, and there’s more smeared up into the thick of his hair between his cock and his navel, and along the tops of his thighs. His ass stings from being stretched and then emptied and his ankle twinges from where he knocked it against part of the chair and his chest –

Swells, feels lighter than air and impossibly happy and sated, as he grins over at the other man – still jerking his cock fast and furious, eyes glossy and bright on Blaine’s, hand stifling his noise – and over-enunciates, “ _Come_.”

The man in the other apartment scrambles to cup his palm around the head of his long, rosy cock as he shoots off, filling up his own hand till it dribbles back down his shaft but, skillfully, not onto his shirt or his open fly. He flumps backward onto his bed, looking beyond spent, and just lies there still for a moment, while Blaine tugs his boxers back on and slides his arms through his shirt, not bothering to button it up. After a minute or two the man gets up and returns with a box of Kleenex, getting himself clean and sorted out before tucking his spent cock neatly back into his crazy-tight pants and dabbing a little bit of sweat daintily off his forehead. Other than the streaky-red flush that’s shooting high up his cheeks – easier to see, now, with the sun mostly down and the color palette of the street shifted to greys and dull golds rather than the blistering orange from earlier – you can hardly even tell he was up to anything at all. Anyone who saw him would –

Oh. Oh, god, anyone who _saw_.

It hits Blaine like a full-speed freight train: He completely forgot that part of this _thing_ that they have, here, is that they’re both standing in front of completely exposed windows to the outside world, and that anyone in the streets or in other apartments could see one or both of them, jerking off and _fingering themselves_ and passing each other notes like kids in a secret club. Blaine skims a hand over the surface of his gelled-back hair, an echo of the nervous habit he can’t quite indulge in when it’s styled this way. Not once, not _once_ in all their previous “encounters,” has Blaine been so focused on the gorgeous man in the other apartment that he’s forgotten about that crucial, terrifying factor – that factor’s always been part _of_ the encounter, part of the electricity, whether Blaine wants it to be (and so often he _has_ ) or he doesn’t. Not once, until now.

This man is simply the only audience that matters.

Blaine’s feeling _awesome –_ that orgasm was a long time coming, he’s spent and sexy and wonderful – until, as he floats back down to earth, he realizes something else: the man in the other window is gone.

Blaine frowns, but like, it figures. If the boyfriend with the glasses was calling for him from deeper in the apartment, there’s probably only so long he could keep him waiting without looking suspicious. Instead, in his place, there’s one more blue-marker-scribbled note, propped up against the open window so Blaine can read it. When his brain finally parses what it is – there’s no context for it, and no dashes, so it doesn’t quite register at first – he nearly falls back out of his chair in shock. No way. No _fucking_ way.

It’s nine digits, starting somehow with an _Ohio area code_ , and underneath, one phrase:

_SO WE TELL EACH OTHER NEXT TIME_

Blaine frantically wipes his messy hand on the side of his boxers and then _dives_ across the bed to his end table, snatching up his phone from where it’s been charging and scrambling back over to the window to look out at the sign, checking and double-checking more times than he can count as he enters the number in with trembling, still-kind-of-sticky hands.

Jesus, what does he even _say_ …?

He composes about a dozen awkward, overwrought messages, both on the screen and just kind of in his head, before he gives up and settles on _It’s Blaine, from across the street._

He hits send and tries not to have a panic attack.

Across the alley, the man he just texted and that man’s _boyfriend_ step back into the bedroom, and the sign with the phone number is surreptitiously snatched down, crumpled up, tossed out of sight. With his back to the window and to Blaine the man suddenly pauses, hand stealing down to his pocket, and he draws out his own phone. His weight shifts softly to one hip. He starts typing a response.

_Hi. :) Blaine, huh?_

Blaine shudders out a long, deep exhale.

_uhh yeah. And you?_ He’s aching, dying to know. But the reply comes:

_Hahaha, hmm, I’m not sure about all that._

Blaine groans, his anxiousness finally dissipating into a smile, and drops his head, knocking it into his phone a little.

_I’m not gonna put you in my phone as rumplestiltskin_

In the room across, both men are leaving again, but for a second Blaine sees his new texting buddy shake with a little bark of laughter.

_Lol! Call me whatever you like. And go ahead and try to guess if that suits you also._

Blaine thinks on it, for a moment, and almost saves the contact as Marc. But in the end, he just goes with “Anonymous.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5b coming tomorrow :) and a mini-"warning" this chapter for phone sex! It wouldn't be a threepwillow fic without it, I suppose.

Starting back is…harder, Blaine thinks, than he wants it to be. He’s still so uncertain about the whole situation, which in his most desperate moments he finds kind of funny – exhibitionism and voyeurism and all that other stuff, sure, he conquered that no problem, but getting his head around this _open relationship_ thing, that’s giving him pause. But the edginess left inside him from their little hiatus hasn’t eased, and it itches into his fingers sometimes, or the backs of his knees. The whole thing was easier when there were fewer elements involved, just bodies in the dark. It’s definitely harder once you add in words.

Of course, it’s definitely hard to _complain_ when some of those words are like this:

 **Anonymous:** _Got a second?_

 **Blaine:** _ugh, sure, I’m on break at work. Boss is killing me_  
**Blaine:** _he’s called the store 3 times today trying to work out how we can cover shifts for someone at the other location and it’s all piecemeal and weird_

 **Anonymous:** _Ahh, the daily grind. Bummer._  
**Anonymous:** _It’s just that meanwhile, I just woke up, if that’s something you’re into._

Attached is a picture, grainy and over-exposed, shot from a tight upward-facing angle that gives Blaine a long, uninterrupted view of the man’s torso, starting at the dark neat-trimmed hair low between his hips and stretching up to the dip of his collarbones and the pale column of his throat. Blaine feels his breath quicken, feels the flush creep pricking red up the back of his neck. He should have known it would be like this.

 **Blaine:** _jesus christ, I’m AT WORK_  
**Blaine:** _you are so sexy._

 **Anonymous:** _Mmm, thanks._  
**Anonymous:** _I think I was dreaming about you because I woke up *so* hard_

 **Blaine:** _…that is the best thing I’ve heard all day_

 **Anonymous:** _Happy to be the bearer of good news._  
**Anonymous:** _Should I jerk off right here, or in the shower?_

 **Blaine:** _well_  
**Blaine:** _why make a mess?_

 **Anonymous:** _Good point._

Blaine always hesitates for just the briefest moment when it gets this far, wetting his lips, daring himself to push past that edginess, that hesitance. But for this man, he always does. Now that he’s back in Blaine’s life, Blaine’s going to capitalize on it as much as he can – he has a lot of lost time to make up for.

He adds, _Shower big enough for two?_

 **Anonymous:** _Why do you ask, hmm? ;)_

 **Blaine:** _thinking about what I’d do to you (like usual)_  
**Blaine:** _what I’d do to that ass_

 **Anonymous:** _…Oh._  
**Anonymous:** _Well, I might not…make it to the shower_

 **Blaine:** _hey, you started it_

Emboldened, he attaches his own picture – a blurry, poorly-lit shot of the crotch of his brown corduroys, tented obscenely over the stiff erection he’s gotten in the back room at work, fabric straining.

 **Blaine:** _now run along before I get too worked up to think my way out of this before my break is over_  
**Blaine:** _see you tonight?_

 **Anonymous:** _Ooh, yes. Closer to 4 than 3 though, probably, going out with some girlfriends._  
**Anonymous:** _I’ll text you?_

 **Blaine:** _looking forward to it._

(And a couple of his own sultry-eyed emojis.)

It’s not quite what they’d had before Blaine found out about _C_ – the one way Mr. Anonymous refers to his boyfriend, when he has to – but it’s still so, so nice, and frankly, that alone is almost too good to be true.

\--

“Well, looks like someone’s mood swings are back on the freaking rise,” says Bernadette, when she catches him whistling as he processes some inventory reports. He rolls his eyes at her, like usual, but keeps whistling straight through it, the hook from the newest Beyoncé that he probably couldn’t stop jamming to if he tried. She tugs one strap of his suspenders and snaps it hard back against his shoulder.

“Hey!”

“Look me in the eye,” says Bernie, “and tell me you do not have a secret boyfriend.”

Blaine doesn’t, so he looks her dead in the eye and says, “I do not have a secret boyfriend.”

With his fingers crossed under the counter, for some reason.

\--

“So you got Lupita here?” says Blaine, walking slow at Sam’s side through the rows of little pens.

“Yeah!” says Sam. “Well, you know, at the doggie part on the other side. I didn’t even realize they had cats too until I looked it up on the internet. Oh my god, look at that one, why are his feet so huge?”

“It’s called ‘polydactyl,’” says the little Indian girl in the blue vest who’s helping them. “They’re born with extra toes.”

“Blaine!” Sam says excitedly, pointing. “Get extra toes cat!”

Blaine laughs. The chubby, round-faced orange cat with the funny-looking front paws is definitely cute, but he’s going to have to look around at all of them before he makes his decision.

Blaine managed to bounce back from that pay-cut fiasco at work pretty well financially, and after threatening to for months, he’s really serious about adopting a kitty. He cleared it with his landlady, who said she’s okay with pets as long as they’re relatively quiet – which rules out a skinny black-and-white thing who’s been yowling since the moment Blaine walked in – and he’s already warned Tristan that any dinners or parties he attends at Blaine’s place should probably now be preceded by several antihistamines. He’s been thinking a lot about what Elliot said about loneliness, and since he doesn’t really have any hot human roommate prospects at this time, a feline friend sounds like the perfect solution.

“Are all of your cats fixed?” he asks.

“Yes,” says the shelter attendant. “If they’re old enough. If you’re interested in adopting a kitten under five months you’ll probably have to look into the procedure yourself.”

“Nah, that’s okay,” says Blaine. “I kind of want a grown-up kitty.” He noses up to a glass-front cage with a lazy, gold-eyed grey cat in it, sprawled completely on her back with her paws in the air. He’s only ever seen dogs do that and he chuckles to himself, tugging out his phone to snap a picture. Everyone will want to see this.

He sends it to Elliot, Tina, Cooper, and – at the last second – his Mr. Anonymous.

 **Blaine:** _Look at this doof!_

Amazingly, he gets a response almost right away:

**Anonymous:** _Oh my GOD, if you have any goodness in your heart, please stick your face right into that belly. Oh my god. I can’t._

Blaine laughs even harder. He studies on the cage – the little card there says her name is Coconut, which is stupid and adorable, and she’s about three years old and loves napping and exploring. A little shy around large groups of people, probably not great with kids, but fine for a stable, single-pet household.

“Blaine!” yells Sam, from the other side of the room. “They have one of those creepy hairless ones and his name is Pitbull – like, because he’s bald, like Pitbull, but it’s _funny_ because pit bull is a dog – “  

“Yeah we get it, Sam,” he calls back. The girl he’s with titters out a little laugh, and Blaine, still smiling too, presses a hand to his face. “Um,” he says after a minute, “can I see this one?” He taps a little on Coconut’s cage, and the girl – Blaine really has got to learn her name, squints surreptitiously down at her nametag – _Lani_ takes him around to the back, where the little cat pods open up and he can poke his fingers through and pet across the kitty’s fur. She’s super soft, and she squirms on her back for a few minutes, unsure of what to do, before rolling over to stand up and face him, tentatively sniffing at his fingertips. Her whiskers are _awesome_.

 _What do you think,_ Blaine texts, _should I get her?_

 **Anonymous:** _Wait, you’re not just looking? You’re actually going to adopt? Oh my god!!_

 **Blaine:** _been kicking the idea around anyway. it’s a big commitment though and I’m not quite sure_

 **Anonymous:** _I mean, I think if you think it would be good for you, you should do it. Don’t fight the urge to fulfill your needs for a furry friend!_  
**Anonymous:** _Especially one who’s that PRECIOUS. Do it. Peer pressure._

Blaine smiles – at Lani, at the kitty, and at his phone, where someone has somehow just perfectly said the exact words he needed to hear.

 **Blaine:** _lol ok, thanks for the push! think I’m about to go make this official :)_

 _That,_ his Anonymous texts back, _is the best thing I have heard all day._

\--

Across the alley between Blaine’s apartment building and the next one over, a light flickers on in Blaine’s very favorite window, and he smiles, the heat and urgency already starting to trickle down along his skin. They’re in the bleak pit of August, his air conditioning unit roaring full bore in the living room, and the thought of doing anything that makes him _more_ sweaty sounds kind of appalling – anything, of course, except for this.

When Blaine crosses over to his own window he can see that his anonymous neighbor is already naked, save for a stupidly tight pair of red-and-white Y-front briefs. Blaine licks his lips a little, imagining unwrapping him from them – his cock doesn’t look all-the-way hard yet, still building to that place, but Blaine thinks he could get it there so _fast_ , especially if he just breathed on it the right way. Blaine’s always kind of loved the feeling of a man’s cock filling and hardening inside of his mouth. He palms at himself through his boxers, his own cock starting to stiffen. As Blaine watches, the man next door curves his hands over his own hips, then runs them in a smooth, slow sweep all the way up his torso, stroking like he’s made of something fragile ( _he’s porcelain_ , Blaine’s mind supplies, _god_ ). He pauses when his fingers brush across his nipples, and stops there, rolling them again and again and again, his hips beginning to pivot and his head drooping back as he turns himself on more and more. Blaine tears his eyes away from the man’s beautiful chest and face to glance at his cock again – it’s fattened up considerably, the head straining out over the waistband of the low-slung briefs, pink and glistening. Blaine salivates.

It’s like that very first night, he realizes, as he toes out of his boxers and strokes his own cock, content for now just to watch and to try to make this last. Blaine remembers this man laid out on his plush bed, carefree and sexual, pleasuring himself in the deep, practiced way of someone who knows exactly how his own body works, what to do to take himself there in the most enjoyable way possible. The man is bent over just a little bit now, ass popped out behind him, to caress broad-palmed up and down his own thighs. Blaine imagines the texture of the hair there, coarse and yet silky all at once. Every upward sweep snags at the leg bands of the underwear and makes his thick cock bounce inside them.

His eyes have slipped closed, but after a second, he opens them again, and fixes Blaine straight-on with a look that is more erotic than any porn Blaine has ever watched in his life. Something sparks hot and dangerous inside of Blaine, triggered by that scathing, sensual gaze – he’s reminded of another time they shared together, that day Blaine went absolutely animal-wild, and kind of all he wants to do now is let this man crawl all over him, and to crawl all over _him_ in return. He twists one arm high above his head, flexing the muscles there – which he has to say, are looking pretty not bad after a month or so of losing his mind at the gym – and leans it against the upper panes of the window, tipping his whole body closer to the glass so that it frames his entire self. His grip on his cock tightens and his strokes speed up. The man in the other window licks his lips and rakes his fingernails up over his hips.

Coconut, all not-quite-nine pounds of her scrawny, furry butt, chooses this exact moment to hop up on the windowsill, tail just _barely_ brushing against Blaine’s cock and his knuckles as she does, letting out her low, tiny chirp that Blaine’s become very familiar with in the last seventy-two hours. Blaine sags, dropping a step away from the window and fixing her with an utterly flabbergasted stare; there’s abrupt movement in the other window, and when Blaine looks back, the man across the alley has both hands clapped to his face and is trembling with laughter, eyes twinkling in the dark.

It breaks something loose inside of Blaine, and he cracks up laughing, too. He runs the hand that hadn’t just been wrapped around his cock down Coconut’s head and then the length of her spine, and then meanders back over to his bed, tossing himself onto it on his back and grabbing for his phone. She stays perched in the windowsill, sitting like a sweet lady with her tail curled around her back feet.

 **Blaine:** _yeah, ok, way to kill the mood, fuzzy butthead_

 **Anonymous:** _She’s so cute, though. She loves you. Can you blame her?_

Blaine chuckles sheepishly. _I guess not,_ he texts.

 **Anonymous:** _Plus, I don’t know about you, but my erection has not gone *anywhere*._  
**Anonymous:** _We could finish this here?_

He sends Blaine a picture, not unlike several others he’s sent before, of his cock, half-sticking out of the same shoved-aside red underwear, a wet spider-silk line of precome connecting the swollen head to his thumb, the rest of his fingers sprawled against his hip and muscled thigh. Blaine groans, head flopping back into the pillows, and fists his own cock for a few strokes more, trying not to literally drool. Despite having each other’s numbers for a couple weeks, their occasional communications being primarily NSFW back-and-forth, full sexual conduct between them has been pretty much limited to the window so far – they’ve never downright _sexted_. It’s a development Blaine’s having a hard time saying no to. He sits up a little better against his headboard, to make texting easier, splays his legs wide, and decides what he wants.

 **Blaine:** _you looked so into yourself, god, it turns me on so much, you know exactly how to make yourself feel good_  
**Blaine:** _I want to know that too. teach me. tell me. what should I do?_

It’s a long, hard thirty seconds of the blinking ellipsis as the other man answers, and Blaine feels like his whole libido is dangling on that tiny, stupid animation. He moans again, touching his cock and squeezing at his balls, and just as his eyes are glazing over the response appears.

 **Anonymous:** _I like it all kinds of ways. Right now I want it slow. If I had you I would have you on your back, me sitting on your chest, and I’d feed myself right into your sweet mouth. Tug on my ass, pull me in, wanna fuck you_

 **Blaine:** _fuck!! I’ll be so good, be so gentle, I love sucking cock and yours is incredible_

 **Anonymous:** _I could tell. ;)_  
**Anonymous:** _Don’t be too gentle. Your arms are so hot, use that, use me and I’ll use you_

 **Blaine:** _yes, yes, jesus_

Blaine’s left arm falls to the side, cradling the phone, and his right hand curls back tight and thirsty around his cock, jerking faster now, needing something, anything. He cranes back against the pillows and the headboard and imagines it, flat on his back, those marble-sculpture thighs parted around his face and that long, pink cock driving again and again into his mouth, edging into his throat. He imagines his hands cupped around each cheek of that tight-white- _perfect_ ass, his fingertips dipping into the furrow between, tugging him forward for more, more, _more_.

 **Blaine:** _got my hands around your ass cheeks so my fingers slip into your crack a little, tease you there_

 **Anonymous:** _Get your hands all over me, make me feel you…wish you were here right now_  
**Anonymous:** _I just want my skin to be touched_

 **Blaine:** _I wanna touch you everywhere, hips, ass, legs, back, so hot, so strong_  
**Blaine:** _pull out when you’re done and come on my face_

 **Anonymous:** _Oh, fuck._

The texts trail off after that, and Blaine feels a little bad except – he doesn’t, because he’s too twisted up in the fantasy of it now. He can see it all so plainly, even with his not-quite-sharp-focused mental image of the man he’s only seen from the distance of the alley’s width. How good they’d look together. How fucking trashed _he’d_ look, lips raw red from getting fucked by a man with such powerful hips, come streaked across his mouth and his cheeks, both of them sinking into the mess, dark and intimate. Blaine gets both hands on himself now, the phone discarded as he climbs closer and closer to the edge, one hand tight and sloppy on his cock as it leaks and surges, the other up to his face, three fingers in his mouth, imagining, imagining. If “anonymous” could see him like this.

– If Blaine could see _him_ like this. More than just the face-fucking fantasy – what’s his neighbor doing now? Blaine pictures _that_ , too, sees him sitting up on his knees with a pillow wedged between his legs, bouncing on it in desperate driving thrusts so his cock smears against the pillowcase, seeking that friction in a way that still leaves both his hands free to text, and to touch himself everywhere, languid and luxurious like he wants most, tweaking his own nipples, raking fingernails through his own hair. The vision of him wild with lust and self-service is almost as hot as the other fantasy, and it’s when the lines of them all run together – him getting himself off, like that, thinking about Blaine, like this, both of them knowing they’re both also thinking about the blowjob together, about lips and cocks and skin – that Blaine’s grip on himself seizes up tight-twisted and he wrings out one hell of an orgasm, not a whole lot of come but a lot of _power_ , lightning in his veins, a piano-string plucked. His cock barely even goes soft for another moment or two as the swirling passion peters out.

It’s the kind of orgasm he usually snuggles and passes out after, if he’s being honest – but at some point, Coconut hopped down from the ledge and disappeared from sight, and Blaine can’t help himself. He awkwardly edges his fingers back out of his mouth and wipes them on the corner of his bedspread, and then crawls on his knees to the far edge of the bed, where he can get up, and cross softly to the window.

 **Blaine:** _that was so good. You’re too good_  
**Blaine:** _thank you for the lesson and I will take it to heart :P_

If he squints, he can see his partner flat on his stomach on the far side of the bed, hips still churning against the mattress but slow, dragging, like he’s coming down, too. So not exactly Blaine’s vision but _certainly_ not bad, because Blaine has a beautiful, unobstructed view of his juicy-round ass and broad, muscular back at this angle, that little tease of tattoo still unreadable but tantalizing. Blaine watches as he fumbles for his phone, and replies.

 **Anonymous:** _Believe me, the pleasure’s all mine_  
**Anonymous:** _Let’s say same time again, night after next?_

 **Blaine:** _you know I’ll be there_

 **Anonymous:** _Great. Maybe this time don’t invite any surprise feline guests._

Blaine laughs and texts back, _yeah, learned that lesson too._

In the other apartment, his back to Blaine, Mr. Anonymous gives a feeble, fucked-out wave of his arm, and then, faceplanting again, flicks the bedroom light off and calls it a night. It’s a cute little gesture that brings a smile to Blaine’s face, not least of all because it makes him feel super powerful and accomplished; his neighbor looks _wrecked_ , and Blaine’s definitely responsible. But it’s also just so…human. Between these little moments he gets sometimes, and the approximately twelve percent of their text-message content that _isn’t_ raunchy in nature, Blaine’s starting to really get a feeling for who this guy is, what he’s like, how he moves through the world. Things are different without the barrier of the windows and the alley making Blaine into the transfixed observer or the brazen performer, the voyeur or the animal. Tonight just felt like – sex, hot and heady and _right_ , enough to knock Blaine right out of this world. God, he’s so sleepy.

After he cleans himself up, before he zonks out for good, Blaine thumbs back through the night’s conversation, emoticons and all, grinning lazily to himself. His eyes catch on a phrase halfway down: _wish you were here right now._

Blaine – kind of wishes he’d been there too.

Blaine kind of thinks that maybe he would be there if the other man just asked.

\--

 **Blaine:** _so hey, you’ve got – an ohio area code? what’s the story there?_

He’s waiting on a Z train and it’s seriously late, and Tina keeps badgering him with questions about Mercedes’s bridal shower, which he isn’t even going to. He’s got to do something to keep himself from going insane and, insanely, this was somehow the first thing that came to mind. He opened with a cute shot of Coconut with her paw over her nose from yesterday evening, and now –

 **Anonymous:** _You know my area code?_

 **Blaine:** _of course I do!_  
**Blaine:** _I’m actually from there originally, just ended up with a nyc number when I gave the hell up on verizon lol_  
**Blaine:** _but I was definitely a 614 for a while_

 **Anonymous:** _Well, what a charming coincidence._  
**Anonymous:** _I’m from Lima, but I came here for school, never went back. So not exactly a high-falutin’ Columbus boy like yourself._

 **Blaine:** _we lived in westerville actually :P_

**Anonymous:** _Ooh, Westerville’s pretty. We went to see a really great production of Rent there once._

**Tina Cohen-Chang:** _SHIT OKAY theres a fruit mercedes hates and i cant remember what it is?? is it PEACHES bc if it is im fuckd_

 **Blaine:** _it’s pears. Calm down._

 **Blaine:** _Rent? you into a lot of broadway?_

 **Anonymous:** _Blaine, if you’re not into Broadway, what’s the point of living in New York?_

 **Blaine:** _lol_

 **Tina Cohen-Chang:** _omg thank GOD_

The train _finally_ pulls up, Blaine and the other impatient commuters shuffling forward and grumbling, a girl down closer to the tail end yelling loudly into her own phone about how they’re about to lose service and she needs to go. He shoulders forward into the train – it’s crowded for a weekday, standing room only, sweaty and cramped and god, Blaine’s glad to be going home to his shower. As the train pulls off, his phone buzzes with one last message before his bars drop down from one to none:

**Anonymous:** _I was actually in a few high school productions myself, though nothing so compelling as Rent. But I do a mean Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror._

Blaine exhales hard at that, his feelings about it doing a couple of weird twists in his chest. A high school production of Rocky Horror sounds – interesting, kind of terrifying, almost impossible to do without _some_ kind of outrage. And Riff-Raff is like the least sexy part of the whole thing, so Blaine’s having a hard time superimposing his hot neighbor into the role, with the hair and the weird hands and stuff. But it only takes a few awkward, unsettling seconds before Blaine realizes that his hot neighbor could probably even make Riff-Raff sexy. He imagines that high, lovely voice of that laugh so long ago growling low and foreboding on Time Warp and he can definitely get into it. (He resolutely does _not_ picture him as Rocky, or Frank ‘N’ Furter, tempting as it may be. He cannot get a boner on this freaking Z train.)

When he gets off three stops later he responds the instant he has signal.

**Blaine:** _ha ha! oh man, I’d pay to see that, I bet you were amazing_

**Tina Cohen-Chang:** _um wtf?_

Blaine blinks, then pages back twice, and – oh. While he was unreachable, she must have texted him again about her crazed party problems; sure enough, he received a message that his phone never alerted him about, Tina panicking more, _if this restaurant wont let me bring my own cake s2g??_ His message went through to her by accident. Frowning, he copy-pastes it into the right conversation and sends it again, and tries to apologize to Tina without also triggering any more panic or suspicion.

 **Blaine:** _sorry sorry, that was for someone else_

 **Tina Cohen-Chang:** _i mean, obvi…….whatever_  
**Tina Cohen-Chang:** _tell me how this looks_

She sends a picture of a tall, narrow column of a cake, kind of more like a trifle just without the glass dish – cake then cream then peaches, et cetera et cetera, about five layers of each in all, with more slices across the top in a star pattern, some raspberries in there too. It actually looks pretty amazing, and he tells her as much, which seems to assuage her. In the meantime he gets another message.

 **Anonymous:** _It would’ve been a lot better if my idiot stepbrother hadn’t been the world’s worst Brad – our director had to step into the role at the last minute and it just made it creepy._

 **Blaine:** _yikes_

 **Anonymous:** _I might still have a couple of photos somewhere, though, if you’re lucky. ;)_

Blaine smiles, sort of – touched, that he would even bother. He writes, _I mean, if it’s packed away somewhere don’t bother._

 **Anonymous:** _What can I say, I’m feeling generous. :)_

A “real smile,” without the semicolon wink Blaine’s come to think of as Mr. Anonymous’s sassy trademark. Blaine’s smile broadens and he rests a hand on his heart, just a little.

He’s stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk, though, and someone plows right into his shoulder, sending him stumbling and then scurrying off, shaking his head to clear it.

\--

Eventually, as weird as it feels to do, Blaine has to admit to himself that there’s a line they’ve crossed. He’s never used the term “friends with benefits” to describe his relationship with anyone – not even Sebastian, who’d apparently frequently thought of Blaine as such while Blaine was still calling him _my boyfriend Sebastian_ – but just a few more text conversations like that, text conversations that don’t start with _what are you wearing_ but start with _no, seriously, what are you wearing, is that the new Thom Browne because it looks amazing_ , and Blaine thinks they’re definitely beyond the sordid booty call level of acquaintance. Blaine can’t quite stop playing the Allen the Hot TA game, because he still doesn’t know his name or his age or his job or his life, still hasn’t even seen his face close enough to know the color of his eyes, but he gets little – snippets, here and there. He knows the man loves fashion, and knows nothing about sports, which proves a stereotype and Blaine thinks it’s kind of cute. He knows a lot about cars, which _disproves_ the stereotype, and Blaine thinks that’s kind of – _hot._

“Mark-with-a- _K_ ,” he decides, speaking aloud to Coconut, who’s sitting by the sliding-door of his shower while he gels his hair, fascinated by the residual water in the stall. “Mark who’s going to be a famous fashion designer someday, and they say _ooh, Mr. Mark, you’re so beautiful, you should be a model for your own designs!_ And he says – ” Blaine affects his neighbor’s voice, high and lilting, and as sassy as he pictures it in their messages – like Jack from Will  & Grace, only not terrible – “ _What do you think I’ve been doing for the past twenty-five years?_ ” Blaine laughs to himself and rinses the rest of the gel off his hands, scrubbing a thumb on his eyebrows and checking the weather on his phone. It’s not _too_ hot – the mildest day they’ve had all week, to be sure – so he thinks he’ll probably be safe without a gel touchup after lunch. He leaves it behind, then, toes into his shoes, grabs his bag and heads off to work.

He is a little fidgety, as morning winds on into afternoon, because when they drew up the performance roster for August, Lance and Bernadette asked him if maybe he’d take another slot, and for some reason Blaine said yes. He enjoyed it, that day back a few weeks prior – it had been a while, but it didn’t feel forgotten or lost, it was like riding a bicycle – but half his reasons for enjoying it had been therapeutic and self-indulgent, trying to overcome and put that he’s-got-a-boyfriend disaster out of his head. This time is going to be so much less raw and organic, and Blaine’s worried that he’s doing that annoying thing he does sometimes where he over-analyzes every aspect of something in an effort to make it perfect, only to have it implode because he’s put too much pressure on it. (Come to think of it, that sounds like the end of his last real relationship. Gross.) It’s easy to forget about when he’s at home or on his short shifts, but when he’s around in RockShop longer than a few hours, he finds himself churning it over and over in his head. Subbing in for someone who’s missing or silly karaoke nights with friends is all just casual and fun. This feels, instead, remarkably serious.

“Not too long till your big day, eyy boss?” Lance says, as they help a nice old gentleman with a wheelchair and a saxophone up into the performance window. Blaine offers him a tense smile.

\--

 **Anonymous:** _Okay, new paint for the living room, thoughts?_ [paint chips.JPEG]

 **Blaine:** _hmmmmm. think I like the first or third best? second one too dark maybe and the other two too purple_

 **Anonymous:** _Thank you! That’s what I have been saying this whole time!!_  
**Anonymous:** _C likes the fourth one best but it’s going to clash SO badly with our sofa, he’s not taking into account the afternoon light, ugh. Hopefully I can talk him out of it._

 **Blaine:** _what color’s the sofa?_

 **Anonymous:** _Sort of like the red end of terra cotta._

 **Blaine:** _oh, yeah, no way_  
**Blaine:** _third one is my favorite probably_  
**Blaine:** _oh and I meant to tell you thank you sooo much for passing along that lemon chicken recipe! I feel like I never said_  
**Blaine:** _it was a huge hit for my friend’s anniversary dinner, they loved it more than my actual gift lol_

 **Anonymous:** _No problem. It’s an old recipe of my mom’s and I’ve always loved it._

 **Blaine:** _are you and she really close?_

 **Anonymous:** _We were._  
**Anonymous:** _She passed away when I was pretty young, though._

**Blaine:** _…oh. oh no, I’m so sorry, that was really insensitive of me_

**Anonymous:** _It’s fine, you couldn’t have known. It’s been a long time so the ache is small and manageable. But yeah, she was wonderful. I think she was the first person who knew I was gay when I was a kid and she’s a big part of what allowed me to be totally okay with it_  
**Anonymous:** _And man, could she cook. I owe like everything I know about food to her._

 **Blaine:** _that’s awesome! my mom only scores like a 6/10 on the cooking thing and on the gay thing_  
**Blaine:** _Well, tell her thank you from me, too._

 **Anonymous:** _I will. :)_


	6. (Chapter 5b)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So this is chapter 5b! It's 100% meant to be read through with chapter 5a all as one. It's also the lowest-rated chapter so far in terms of adult content, if that's a thing.)

Blaine can’t believe he’s staying up so late when he has to work in the morning, but he also cannot _believe_ that none of the washing machines were free on what he typically considers His Laundry Day, which is every other Tuesday at eight p.m., thank you very much. He’s going out to dinner with Tina tomorrow, and he’s still got a shirt he borrowed of Tristan’s, after spilling wine on his own at their place and needing a loaner replacement – he can’t return it to them unwashed. But it took almost two hours for the washers to free up and then Blaine made the idiot mistake of not getting the important shirt in the first load, so he’s had to wait all the way through two wash cycles, and now it’s nearing one and he’s still got clothes in the dryer downstairs. Coconut’s curled into a perfect circle in the fuzzy little cat-bed he bought her and Blaine’s insanely jealous. He’s not going to get any sleep now, not before…

As if the universe is reading his mind, a light flicks on across the alleyway, just in the corner of Blaine’s vision. He glances up from his tablet and peers out and over – it’s a bit earlier than usual, but he’s certainly not complaining. Only as soon as Blaine’s looking, the light dims again, and when he squints harder he can see that the other man has yanked the curtain shut across the window, the light weak and faint around the edges, nearly blending into the faint glow of a late weeknight in the city. Perplexed, Blaine shuffles over to get a better look, keeping his own bedroom light off, for now.

He can see movement through the curtain, a little too much to be just his one neighbor, and that’s when he realizes it – C the boyfriend must be there too. Now Blaine’s even more confused, because he’s pretty sure he and his Mr. Anonymous had already made plans to meet up like usual tonight, which he definitely wouldn’t have done if he’d known someone else was going to be around. This seems – weird, and Blaine hates it, because they’ve been trying so hard _not_ to make this weird, to just have their amazing secret tryst even while knowing full well what the score really is. Blaine fidgets, the toes of one foot scratching an imaginary itch on the opposite calf. He doesn’t like this at all.

What he likes even less is when the curtain comes _back_ open, and there they both are, his statuesque anonymous lover standing tall and cross-looking and the other guy smiling saccharine with placating arms. He reaches over and tugs the window open a few inches, too, the edges of the curtains ruffling just in and out of sight, and even with it opened Blaine can’t hear their voices but he can imagine the discussion they’re having, a tiny mostly-weightless argument about how stuffy it gets in the summer. His neighbor finally relents with a little toss-up of his hands. The boyfriend strokes one hand up and down his forearm, smiling dirty-flirty from around his glasses, and when the two disappear from sight, it’s followed shortly by the light in the room turning back off. Still, from somewhere, there’s an electronic-blue glow, glancing off the edges of the parts of that room Blaine knows so well now, the wide square shape of the bed, the sill of the window. And when they reappear – he doesn’t know how many minutes later, because he’s just staring transfixed _knowing_ what’s about to happen and unable to tear himself away, he doesn’t like this at _all_ – they’re missing several layers of clothing, touching each other slow and delicate, grinding, kissing. Two people taking up one person’s worth of space on the bed. There’s a moment where, Blaine almost lets himself believe, his beautiful neighbor flicks a glance out his window to Blaine’s own, just the briefest blink of apology and ache.

Blaine yanks his own curtains sharply shut and turns his back to the window, hand cupped over his mouth, because for some reason he kind of feels like he might be about to be sick.

\--

“Remember two days ago when you wouldn’t shut up about this risotto?” says Tina, into a lull in their conversation.

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that,” says Blaine, small and sheepish. “It’s just like – it’s kind of my favorite.”

“Yeah,” says Tina, “okay, except, you have been shuffling yours around your plate more than you’ve actually been putting it in your mouth.” She taps the tines of her own fork to the edge of his plate in a noise that sounds – kind of terrible, and Blaine stirs a little in his seat, sits up a little straighter, tries not to flush embarrassed. “Stop being such a Mad-Eye Moody and _please_ tell me what’s wrong and let me help you. You know how I get if I can’t meddle in other people’s lives as often as I need to.”

Blaine does laugh a little at that. “Sorry,” he says. “I think I’m just getting a little anxious about my set at RockShop on Monday. It’s been a while since I’ve performed with, like, enough advance notice to actually get nervous about it. It seems way more real that way.”

“Really,” she says, voice entirely too skeptical in a way that makes Blaine even more nervous. “So it has nothing to do with the three text messages you have gotten since we got here that you have all but _jumped_ to check and answer like you’re waiting for the news that your surrogate just gave birth to your firstborn.”

“Oh my god,” Blaine whispers faintly, more to himself than to Tina.

“Which, by the way, if that’s really happening, I’m going to be super hurt, because you told me _I_ could be the surrogate for your firstborn, I thought we were keeping it Asian together – ”

“Tina – ”

“But I’m pretty sure that’s not it, and I’m pretty sure it’s whoever you’ve been texting _all the time_ lately without telling anyone who the hell it is, so spill,” she says finally. She takes a sip from her water glass and reclines back in her chair a little, as if to say _we can sit here all night_.

And just… _fuck_. Blaine thumbs at his phone, where a text from “Anonymous” says _Honestly, I hate when he surprises me like this and he *knows* I do, I can’t believe him. Again, sorry_. He turns it over and over in his hand against the flat of the table and feels Tina’s eyes boring into him even without looking at her. He thinks about _I liked that it was secret, that it was **mine**_. He forces himself to take a couple of deep breaths.

The jig, as they say, is up.

“I – I can explain,” he begins, at last. He then proceeds to not explain – anything. They sit in silence for another few beats.

She’s impatient. “Does this have anything to do with your rand-o PMS mood swings you’ve been having all summer?”

“Yes,” Blaine says weakly. He can’t even look her in the eye. This is so not happening.

“And what, you’re just – keeping this from _me_ , it’s something I can’t know, or – ”

“It’s not like that,” he whispers. “No one knows. Not you, or Sam, or anyone.” He sighs, and finally dares to look up. “You have to _promise_ not to tell.” He’s looking her dead in the eye now, aware that he probably seems a bit crazy. It’s enough to startle her into seriousness.

“Whoa, okay Blaineydays, don’t worry, I promise.”

“And you have to promise me one other thing – ” He thinks about every time he’s gone to Tina’s apartment, how he’s forced himself not to look across the row of mailboxes in the ground-floor annex, searching, searching – “You have to promise you’ll stay out of the whole thing and you won’t – deliberately seek him out, you won’t – ”

“Whoa whoa whoa, _him_?” Tina hisses. “Him who?”

“I don’t even know his name,” Blaine confesses.

And then – he confesses, and confesses. He tells Tina the whole sordid tale – leaving out perhaps the most sordid of the details – about the first night when Blaine looked across and _saw_ , how it went from one-sided and terrifying to two-sided and _insanely_ terrifying, the way the whole thing’s made Blaine feel both cracked-open and raw and yet also important, invincible. (“ _He’s_ dream-guy-who-needs-a-sexy-name?” “I guess.”) He tells her about the boyfriend with the glasses, the huge loop that threw him for, but how it all evened back out eventually, and how it doesn’t even bother Blaine as long as he doesn’t really have to think about it. How it’s kind of the best sex he’s ever had in his life, an admission that has Tina crowing and downing the rest of her drink; how it’s been going on for months, but they’ve only just recently really started _talking,_ communicating anyway, with the sexy texts and little glimpses at each other’s lives (“So it was _his_ lemon chicken Elliot wouldn’t shut up about!” “I guess.”), until they got to this point, still three or four layers removed from one another but in their own little groove together, almost like it’s always been this way, like  there’s nothing unusual about it at all.

Blaine thought that by telling her a weight might be lifted from his chest, the burden of keeping a secret locked up so tight finally alleviated. And in a way, it is; there’s something super satisfying about knowing that someone else knows. But it’s like – now someone else _knows_ , and airing it out into the light of day makes it seem both more and less real, in a way Blaine’s not sure if he likes or not. And he knows she’s going to have eight hundred questions that he does not really feel like answering here in this sort-of-kind-of nice restaurant. In fact, he can see it on her face that one is forming right about _now_ –

“So when I said you couldn’t really do just sex, without a full-on boyfriend, and you got all huffy with me,” she says. “It was this guy? This ‘anonymous’ guy, that you’ve been doing this – craziest thing I’ve ever heard of in my _life_ with, all this time, that’s your casual sex guy?”

“Y-es,” Blaine says slowly, not quite sure what she’s getting at.

“Oh, but Blainers,” she says to him, her face a sweet, compassionate moue of pity, and then she says _it_ , she says –

“You _love_ this guy.”

A sick, ice-cold trickle of nausea rolls down the back of Blaine’s neck and into the pit of his stomach, and he just prays it doesn’t flick across his face before he can school it back into something reasonable, because no. “No,” he says, clumsily, and then with more certainty, “No, no, Tina. That’s not what we’re doing here. We’re just – I guess we’re sort of friends, now, in a weird way, but that’s all it is, just a friends-who-fool-around kind of thing, the way Elliot and Rian were before – ”

“Yeah, _before_ ,” she says. “Before Rian filled Elliot’s entire apartment with one yellow lily for each day that they’d known each other and then took him home to meet his mom and his four sisters. Blaine, you are like, t-minus four seconds from yellow lily territory.”

“Hydrangeas,” Blaine whispers.

“What?”

“It – he’d hate lilies, probably, it’d be better with hydrangeas, blue ones or that greenish off-white – ”

“Oh my _god_ , Blaine! Are you even listening to yourself? Did you even listen to that _entire_ story you just told me? All the fumbles at RockShop, the weird way you got when you kept going to the gym – ”

“No – ”

“You blew off the hot TA because of him.”

“Tina, _no_ – ”

“You picked out your _cat_ because of him!”

“I _can’t_ be in love with him, Tina,” he swears, almost desperately, like he’s begging her to agree with him, to reassure him that he’s right. “I don’t…I don’t even know his _name_.”

Just like that, Blaine is crying, in this sort-of-kind-of nice restaurant, right into this risotto that he’s been looking forward to all week.

\--

It’s dark in his apartment.

Outside, a fire truck from down the street roars to life, sirens blaring. The noise throbs in Blaine’s head and makes his headache worse. He feels Coconut stir from the lump she’s in but after a minute she resettles and stays put. The high whirling whines fade to nothing as the engine speeds away.

It’s dark in his apartment, and quiet.

Blaine drifts somewhere between asleep and awake, tucked along his sofa on his side with his back to the empty room, his face to the sofa’s back. His cat is curled warm and tight at the small of his back, and from time to time she purrs, then stops again. The AC unit in his living room window does kind of the same thing, kicking on when it gets a bit too warm, whirring down again when its job is done. The occasional rumbles in the room are the faintest, weakest balm against the tight-wrought ache of Blaine, the too-dry blear of his eyes and the fatigue in his muscles. He likes the white noise, but only as much as he likes anything right now, which is barely at all. Blaine feels like he’s dying. Or more like – he feels like he’s dead.

He can’t be in love with him.

But more like – he is.

Above his head, on the arm of the sofa, his phone vibrates, the buzz of it too sharp and gritty, the light of its screen flickering on too harsh. Being dead feels kind of like having a hangover, only instead of in your head – though Blaine’s head is pounding, to be sure, he’s dehydrated and also totally out of brainpower – it’s in your chest; it’s in the pit of the cavity where your heart is meant to be pumping, blood and oxygen and hope and light down into your veins and the rest of you, except it’s stopped working, because you’re dead. He ignores his phone, much like he has been for most of the day, meaning that he ignores it for about the span of four non-heartbeats before wrenching his arm up to fumble for it and tugging it down so he can see what it says. Sam this time. _Dude were woried about u._ He presses it into the fabric of the sofa screen-down so he can’t see its light. His headache throbs.

Blaine is in love with him. Blaine is in love with a man he’s never spoken to face-to-face, never been closer than an alleyway’s width across to ( _except once,_ his pulsing head reminds him, that fateful day at the grocery). Blaine is in love with a man who’s never told him his name, or how old he is, or what he does for a living; a man who doesn’t know Blaine’s last name, or the names of his friends and family, or the size clothes he wears, or the sound of his voice. It seems impossible and outlandish and _artificial_ , that Blaine could love such a relative stranger – like surely Blaine is only in love with the version of this man he’s dreamed up in his head, so many times in such idlings he dared to call _games_ , the bouncer, the fashion designer, Marc-with-a-C. Blaine can’t believe this even happened.

And yet – Blaine can’t believe he _didn’t_ see it happening, that it blindsided him so wholly that he never even realized that everything Tina had said to him was absolutely right. Because Blaine is in love with a man who is more beautiful than anyone he’s ever seen, even from an alleyway’s width away. A man whose heart is big and open ( _a love for a mother dead years and years ago still burning small and bright_ ), whose wit is sharp and discerning ( _not an inch of him suffering fools lightly, Brad Majors or paint colors_ ), who knows what he wants and _gets_ what he wants in life ( _stick your face in that cat belly!_ ) and in bed ( _I like it all kinds of ways_ ). A man who unlocked a part of Blaine that Blaine didn’t even know he carried inside him, like performing but more, like great sex but more. A man who, god, Blaine has had _great_ sex with, amazing sex, all without so much as laying a fingertip on one another’s skin, a man who can make Blaine come with a glance or a word or a twist of his fingers against his own body, and can make Blaine _smile_ with all of the same. A man so incredible Blaine felt like he had to keep him a secret, a separate little magic private _thing_ that Blaine could have all for himself.

A man Blaine can’t have all for himself, because that man has a boyfriend.

Blaine is in love with him. Which is exactly why he can never see him again.

Phone still cupped under his hand, Blaine lifts it up again, squinting in the too-crisp glow of its display so close to his face. Slow and clumsy, with his left hand, he swipes through to the different messages he’s been collecting over the course of the day, none of which he’s been able to answer –

 **Elliot:** _Look, I get that it must be super srs if you won’t let tina tell us what’s wrong but just remember we all love you and want to help, don’t let yourself like self-destruct when you have a lotta ppl in your corner_

**Bernadette:** _Don’t worry about it!! Rosco’s gotcha covered, hope you don’t throw up TOO much but food poisoning’s the worst ugh feel better ♥♥♥_

**Tina:** _ok I know u said 24hrs and I think we r being COURTEOUS by giving u 36. but if u don’t show up for lunch and then ur afternoon shift tmrw at work i am comin back to ur apt and i WILL bang the whole door down this time_

 **Sam:** _Dude were woried about u_

And then, again – and maybe he’s not dead, because the tears well fresh again, tears he didn’t even think he had left in him, and Coconut starts purring again as his chest hitches in tiny miserable whimpers – the one message he did write, the one that took all his energy, and the one that doesn’t have an answer –

 **Blaine:** _I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. everything about this is my fault and I can’t believe I’m about to put you through all this because you’re incredible and you don’t deserve it. I’m so sorry. but the thing is I don’t know if I can do this anymore. you said your relationship was open for sex and I get that, that’s great, and if this was just sex there wouldn’t be a problem but for me… it’s not just sex for me anymore. it’s not. I fucked everything up I KNOW but it’s so much more than that to me and I’m so sorry. I ruined this great thing we had going and you don’t deserve it but if you have a boyfriend, I can’t do this to you, I won’t. it’s unfair to you either way but I think it’s MORE unfair for me to lie to you, I won’t lie to you about how I feel, I can’t do that, I can’t keep doing things with you if it’s going to be something more for me than it is for you. you have a boyfriend and you deserve better because you’re amazing, and it can’t be just sex with someone you love. and I love you. I’m so sorry._

It’s dark in his apartment, and quiet, except for the black-on-white glow of Blaine’s text messages and the slow, creaking heave of his sobs, as he dies all over again on his sofa.

\--

The thing about being dead is that your sadness has no stamina. You can’t take a couple hits and bounce back from them, only letting the big and awful things do any real damage. When you’re dead, everything is big and awful.

Blaine cries when he wakes up in the mornings and Anonymous still hasn’t texted him back. He cries when he pours himself a whole bowl of cereal only to discover his milk has expired. He cries when Coconut gets one of the new toys Elliot bought her stuck under the refrigerator and he can _not_ , for the life of him, get it back out.

When his accrued vacation days run out Blaine cries on the subway, too. He cries once or twice at RockShop, which is perhaps the worst and the most humiliating; the number of people he knows who have seen him cry more than doubles. He’s never been more grateful for Bernadette and the way she’s able to keep Danny off his back. Blaine knows he’s been on thin ice ever since the thing with the tuners, and the thought of losing his job on top of everything else he’s lost is just horrifying enough to keep him plugging along as best he can at work, to keep him from bailing out on his Monday set in the front window and just asking Sam to do it (god, Danny _hates_ Sam, there’s just no way), just going through the motions on a numb automatic.

God, he wishes he were numb instead. He wishes he were that hot, phoenix-flare kind of angry-sad that he was when he first found out about C-the-boyfriend, where he could just rage and pound it out and leave behind a pile of ashes that maybe, someday, he could see himself rising from again. But this isn’t like that. As far as Blaine can tell, this is the real-deal, bleak and boundless sort of heartbreak, the Big One that you never get over, not really, anyway. At least some part of him is always going to be dead inside his chest, and the most Blaine will be able to do is figure out how to keep on going, even through the sadness, just to learn to survive.

“ _And as I try to make my way to an ordinary world, I will learn to survive_ ,” he sings, softly under his breath, early in the afternoon on groggy, overcast Monday. All too late he realizes Bernie might hear, and vainly hopes she doesn’t, but she does.

“Ooh, is that on your set list for later?” she says brightly, her smile a little too wide and excited, like she’s trying to smile enough for the both of them. He hasn’t told her much, just enough to keep her satisfied and calm her down, but she knows he’s hurting, and her particular brand of trying-to-help is to just be excessively cheerful and nice and act like nothing is wrong. It’s a really sweet tactic – just not one that’s particularly effective right now. He sighs.

“No,” he tells her. “I do – love a good Duran Duran though. Maybe…next time.” If there is a next time. If Blaine can even make it through _this_ time.

“Cool,” she says. She leans her elbows on the counter next to him where he’s doing the same. He’s been fidgeting with a funny-looking metronome that lives there next to the cash register, trying to keep himself from reaching for his phone in his pocket, which isn’t there.

He made Tina take it. After a solid eighty-four hours of barely leaving his apartment and jumping every time he got a text message, his throat clogging up and his eyes watering when it wasn’t what he wanted to see, Blaine finally realized that if he had to keep living with that nebulous possibility, he was going to go insane. ( _Still I can’t escape the ghost of you._ ) He gave her permission to answer for emergencies, but as far as anyone else is concerned, Blaine’s phone is as good as turned off. He can use his tablet for email and dumb app games when he’s at home, and the work landline for work stuff and the payphone in the shoebox-lobby of his building for pizza deliveries. (He has maybe ordered a lot of pizza, and maybe cried the night they were all out of banana peppers.)

As the first act of the afternoon begins to bustle in – a handful of sorority girls singing a cappella to raise money for their house philanthropy, in cute matching navy-and-pink tees that do nothing to deter Blaine from picturing them as genderbent Dalton Warblers – he does start to get a little bit nervous, if one could even call it that, for his own set. A weird tension sets in, at any rate, like his body knows he _should_ be nervous even as his head and his heart refuse to feel anything but the strangling death in his chest. It’s not least of all because of the weather: the sky is getting greyer and more tumultuous by the minute and it’s highly possible that it’ll start raining. Their awning and car-wash-esque plastic curtain are usually good enough for some rain but if it gets too windy they’ll have to bang out the waterproofing and call it off, reschedule everyone on the roster today, what a pain in everyone’s ass. Blaine’s love-hate relationship with his position as branch manager rears its ugly head yet again.

“Distract me,” he finally murmurs to Bernie, when his hands shift from fiddling with the metronome wand to half-forming piano chords against the cool flat of the countertop. The college girls have great voices, but their set is cutesy and uninspired doo-woppy oldies, and it’s not enough to hold his attention. Plus, he thinks he might lose it if they hit Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

“I actually had a _great_ idea for that,” she says, “or at least – _an_ idea, anyway, you could think about it, or something. Remember how – you told me, one time, you did this thing…” She doesn’t finish, waiting for a prompt from him, an okay-go-ahead. He nods his head only as much as he absolutely has to. “Like, to talk yourself out of liking a guy that you knew it was a bad idea to like. Where you find everything that’s wrong with him. Can’t you do that now…?”

Blaine twists his head to look at her, and god she just looks so _hopeful_ that it almost sets him off again. Honestly, the thought never even occurred to him. He’d mostly stopped playing that miserable game with himself when he started playing – all those other miserable games instead, he hasn’t had a need to, but now – even as the first far-off drumrolls of thunder peter through the sky, he swallows his imminent sobs, and tries.

He’s from Ohio, for one. Blaine hates Ohio, never goes back there if he doesn’t have to, encourages his family to visit here instead as often as he can and avoids most things that remind him of his life there like the plague. Oh, but surely his Anonymous hated it there too – and that’s one more thing that they have in common, something he and Blaine could share, with each other, with Blaine’s friends. Or what about – he works late nights, always out so long and keeping weird hours, totally incompatible with Blaine’s regular daytime work week. They’d move through life at different paces, never catching a minute of overlap. Oh but that’s not true either, because even as they were before they made time for one another, early-morning encounters or mid-afternoon texts, and on Blaine’s days off they’d have whole wide hours of daylight to share, to spend delighting in each other.

They both prefer the right side of the bed. Oh, but Blaine would gladly roll away and take the left, sleep off-kilter for the rest of his life, if that was all it took.

He has a boyfriend who isn’t Blaine.

That’s the real fucking kicker.

His breath hitches, short and wet, and he retreats to the back room, tugs his poor abused handkerchief from his bag and presses it into his face as this afternoon’s little fall of tears leak out, breathing in the laundry-soap scent in jagged fits and starts. He supposes it’s good that he’s getting this out right now, because maybe this way he can make it through his whole set without going off the deep end and scaring their patrons away, he can harness his sadness into something artistic and good instead of something messy and miserable. It only takes him a few moments to let it all loose, and then he folds the handkerchief neatly and sticks it back in his bag, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand before heading back out to the store. Bernadette is helping with another customer, but she finds him when she’s done, still sniffling, even as he rings the older man’s purchase out and thanks him for his patronage and encourages him to tip the performers (they’re currently halfway through Chapel of Love).

“What’s wrong now?” Bernie asks.

“Nothing,” he tells her. “There is absolutely _nothing_ wrong with him.”

“Oh, honey,” she says, but that’s all she can really manage.

The afternoon ticks by, Blaine’s set drawing nearer as the girls begin to wrap up their own and the sky getting more and more cloudy and ominous. Maybe it will rain too hard and he won’t have to do his set at all – a pain in the ass later, sure, but right now it’s sounding kind of awesome. He feels like he’s honestly forgetting the words to Cough Syrup. At three-thirty, the group does a sweet little bow to the three or four people who’ve gathered on the sidewalk to watch and then they step down from the window, beckoning Blaine over with the key to the tip box on the wall. They didn’t make quite as much as RockShop’s acts usually do, but it seems to be a lot more than they were expecting to get, and they’re really excited. The spindly-legged black girl who was singing lead soprano even leans down and pecks Blaine on the cheek. He attempts a smile back at her, but from her reaction he doesn’t quite succeed. The death in his chest twists a little harder.

When they’re gone, Blaine takes his turn, starts rigging up the house keyboard and tweaking his pre-loaded personal settings into place. He finds himself reaching for his phone again – Sam and Mercedes said they would stop by to catch at least a couple of songs, and Tina too, though she has to wait till after an important meeting to sneak out of the office, so she’ll be a little later. He’s doing Gaga’s Speechless just for her and reminds himself to save it for the end.

It’s got to be like three forty-four and fifty-eight seconds, his fingers literally poised over the keys ready to begin, when suddenly Bernadette is yelling at him from the back of the store. “Blaine! _Blaine!_ ” She sounds – frantic, not at all like this intensely-cheery demeanor she’s been forcefully exuding thus far, and it’s enough to make him falter, turn his head slowly back to look for her.

“What is it?”

“Tina’s on the phone for you and it sounds, like, intense,” she says, eyes wide under the brim of her omnipresent hat. Blaine’s – torn, for the most part; Tina does have his phone, and something could be genuinely going wrong, but with Tina, _most_ things sound, like, intense, and it’s taken him so much of his non-existent emotional stamina ( _everything is big and awful_ ) to even force himself into this performance. Plus, a couple of the people who were there for the a cappella girls have stuck around, and are watching him expectantly.

He fidgets. “Can she tell you what it is, maybe?” As he watches, Bernie relays his request through to Tina, and then – whatever Tina says – Bernie _freezes_ , mouth dropping open, both hands on the receiver.

“She says to tell you that he’s called your phone three times.”

\--

Blaine has no memory of moving.

Or well – he kind of does. He remembers he was very careful not to knock the house keyboard over and smash it in his flight, but that as soon as he’d cleared it, he was unquestionably _flying_ out the storefront window, slam past whoever was waiting there to watch him play. He remembers he rounded a corner and ran straight into Sam and Mercedes on their way to see him, but he couldn’t even stop to explain anything to them, couldn’t answer any of the questions they shouted at him as Sam chased him for half of a long block before giving up. He remembers the sky finally split open with rain, zero to bucketing in a matter of seconds, and he couldn’t even care as it soaked him to the bone, destroyed his hair, his shoes. He remembers he quite literally ran out into the middle of the street to stop a taxi and climb into it, and he was obscenely lucky that it was a taxi that didn’t already _have someone in it_ , because he didn’t even stop to check.

 _She says to tell you that he’s called your phone three times_. Three times. Blaine needs to move three times faster than he already is to make it to Tina’s office building, up to the floor with the firm where she’s a receptionist, but when he stumbled out of the cab and threw some cash at the driver and slammed through the revolving door she was already there in the lobby, in her hot-pink pencil skirt and matching necklace, her hair flying out of its blowout curls into a mess of frizz as she paced and panicked and waited for him. He remembers thinking, fuck professional decorum, he’s already dripping wet, and just yelling.

“Tina!”

She whirled to see him, and started running in her tall-tall heels, meeting him halfway. “Blaine!”

Now they’re in the copy room, the door braced shut with a couple huge boxes of different-colored paper, and it feels like Blaine got here in about three seconds with how little he gave a shit about everything, but he knows it’s been too long, that _he_ only called three times and then hasn’t called since, and never left a message. He’s holding his phone in his hand like it’s more precious than a newborn child, and he and Tina huddle over it, both their hearts beating so loudly that Blaine thinks he can hear them fighting for dominance in the tight, fluorescent space.

Tina says it first, even though Blaine’s been thinking it –

“You have to call him back.”

Blaine – nods, just a little, a drop of clinging water rolling off his nose and onto the screen of his phone. He wipes it away and then pages through, phone-contacts-Anonymous, one of the first numbers on the list, he doesn’t even have to scroll down. A cracking sob wells up in his throat and his eyes squeeze shut.

“Fuck, Tina,” he whines.

She snatches the phone out of his hand and presses call before he can stop her.

“ _Fuck_ , Tina!” he says again, but she just pushes it back into his hand, and he holds it up to his ear, just a little bit away trying to keep it from getting too wet, but then closer, more gently, as it rings and rings and rings and –

He doesn’t answer.

“No, no, no,” Blaine babbles, tugging the phone away to stare at it. Fuck, it’s not even his voice on the voicemail, just a feminine pre-recorded message about reaching a mailbox. Blaine’s too startled and afraid to leave a message of his own, the creeping death-feeling threatening to edge back into his chest, so he hangs up, and dials again.

Seven rings, then – nothing.

He collapses onto his ass on the floor.

“ _No_!” he wails. He presses his hand over his mouth, wishes for the comforting smell of his handkerchief all the way back at – fuck, at _RockShop_ , where he’s just run out on his afternoon set and the rest of his shift afterward, where he’s surely going to get fired. And for what? For being so _stupidly_ in love with someone he’s never even met, for feeling like he’s dead and not knowing how to ever get to the end of that feeling, _left me in the vacuum of my heart_ , god, _fuck_ , and now he won’t even answer, because Blaine didn’t answer, because he was trying not to be dead but he fucking blew it. Danny hates him, beautiful Marc-with-a-C or _whoever_ the fuck he is hates him, and Blaine is going to die, not just heart-crumbled feeling-dead die but _actually_ die, sobbing raw and breathless right here in Tina Cohen-Chang’s copy room in soaking wet clothes with his phone curled useless into the palm of his hand.

Tina totters over him and presses a hand to his shoulder, for all the comfort that’s worth. He cries and sobs and _weeps_ , because everything is over, his job, his heart, his _life,_ one-hit KO’d right in the sadness, and his phone is ringing.

His phone.

Is _ringing_.

“Oh my god!” he screams, sitting straight up and then _leaping_ to his feet, nearly planting right back onto his ass as his wet ruined shoes slip and slide on the copy-room linoleum. Tina catches him by the shoulder and rights him, and he holds his phone out between the two of them, where it’s buzzing, Roxy Music playing softly, the word _Anonymous_ plain as day on the screen.

“Oh my god!” Tina yells back, bouncing up and down, and he hops with her, and then, god, _finally_ , answers the call.

 “H-hello?”

“Hey, it’s Kurt,” says the high, clear, _beautiful_ voice on the other end. “Look, Blaine, you were right. Everything you said was right. I don’t deserve this.”

“O…oh,” Blaine whimpers.

“And there’s no way it could have been just sex with someone you love.”

“I know,” Blaine says, still kind of crying, shooting faces at Tina, “okay, I know – “

“And that,” he says – _Kurt_ says, oh _god_ , and he doesn’t just say it, it _rushes_ out of him, suddenly, like it’s too big and incredible to be contained any longer – “is why Chandler and I broke up this morning, because you were right, you knew and he knew and I knew, it was never just sex.

“I’m in love with you too.”

Blaine falls hard back against the wall, both hands clutching the phone to his ear like _everything_ will break if he dares to drop it and not just the phone itself. He can hear nothing so clearly as the soft breathing down the line, sweet and airy, a little too quick with emotion. His own heart thuds once, twice, three times in his chest, not broken, not dead, but _alive_ , glowing bright, surviving.

“Kurt?” he finally manages, the name the sugar and the medicine all in one.

“Yeah,” he says, with a teary little laugh. “With a K.”


	7. (Chapter 6a)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still in NYC, hiding out at a Barnes & Noble and coming down from my Hedwig high, but happily carving out a little nugget of time before my bus this afternoon to get this last chapter out to you! Thanks for following me on this wild ride. I hope the final installment(s) is everything you wanted and more. :) 
> 
> Also a reminder that this is not chapter 7, merely 6a, and that "chapter 8" is 6b and they're meant to be read all together. ♥

“I don’t get what you’re so nervous about, dude. You practiced like a ton, you’re gonna be freakin’ awesome.”

Blaine scratches at the back of his neck, then has to fumble his collar back into place, readjust his bowtie. “It’s not – that,” he tells Sam, who’s been hanging around RockShop waiting for Blaine’s set to start. “Not the performance. I’m just already kind of freaking out about tomorrow.”

“Ohhhh, yeah,” says Sam, “your big date! Dude, that shit is still so crazy – ”

“I know,” says Blaine, but even as he says it, he’s grinning, his heart thudding gleefully harder in his chest.

It’s Wednesday morning just before noon, so it’s been a little less than two days, but it seems like both centuries and mere seconds since Blaine received that fateful phone call from _Kurt Hummel_ – previously known as Anonymous, and the most incredible person Blaine has ever laid eyes on. The phone call where Kurt said the most incredible words Blaine has ever heard – _I’m in love with you too_ – and Blaine’s whole tumultuous, heartbroken world finally righted itself on its axis, and he maybe pinched himself too hard too many times in a desperate effort to believe that he wasn’t dreaming, but he wasn’t. He’s _not_.

He’d realized very quickly that trapped in an overbright copy room with Tina Cohen-Chang was not exactly how he wanted to spend this phone conversation. But with nowhere to go, Blaine was back out on the sidewalk, where the rain was easing up but still not over – and he ended up not caring one fucking _bit_. Blaine wandered aimlessly around the block in the rain for almost _two hours_ just talking and being talked to, listening to the sweet drawl of Kurt’s beautiful voice (so much clearer and more vulnerable than he’d imagined it before, cutting Blaine right to the quick with every breathy syllable) as they filled in the gaps of what they’d been sharing all these months together.

Kurt-with-a-K, it turns out, is a bartender, which explains the late worknights. He’s been doing it for the past year or so to keep on top of things financially while his quote-unquote “real job” – as a junior editor for Vogue.com, where he’d interned unpaid for a couple of years previously – is on hold, because they can’t give him a paying position until he completes his degree in the right field. Vogue is paying for his classes but not for anything else like food or rent. He takes them online at his own pace. Blaine listened to this whole explanation with a shit-eating grin on his face; Kurt’s not so far off from some of his Allen the Hot TA Game imaginings, after all. In turn Blaine told him about RockShop and the horrible mistakes he’d made.

“Oh my gosh, Blaine!” Kurt said, and Blaine was already learning the twist his heart gave every time Kurt said his name. “You just _left_? I don’t – that actually makes me feel kind of terrible, I can’t believe – ”

“Please don’t worry about it at all,” said Blaine, earnest and insistent. “It was worth it.”

Kurt also explained about the real pink elephant in the room: Chandler-the-boyfriend, an actor who’s often either on tour or just performing regionally further north, and the way the whole mess of their relationship was ending and resolving itself.

“I was going to come clean – about us,” Kurt said, “no matter how much I loved keeping it a secret. But as soon as I was telling him it was like he already knew.”

“Oh,” said Blaine, feebly.

“He said he’d noticed something different about me, and when he asked if I loved you, I couldn’t lie to him. But he’s taken it all so well. He’s – too good of a person. He said if I’m really in love with you then there’s no way he can compete, and he doesn’t want to try to force it between him and me.” Kurt laughed, then, astonished. “He said we might even still be friends.”

“God, Kurt.”

“And turns out he’s been sleeping with his understudy, too, so I just don’t even know any more. I just – I never could have dreamed that this would all turn out so well.”

Blaine just hummed his agreement, lingering memories of Sebastian vanishing again as quickly as they arose – something to discuss later, maybe, air that might someday need clearing, but nothing that was worth worrying about now. And he’d pinched himself again, then, right in the crook of his elbow – but he was awake, alive, and in love, and the rain was even starting to let up.

He listened and learned Kurt’s friends, Artie and Sugar and Santana and the incomparable Rachel, and horrible-Brad-Majors-stepbrother Finn, an ill-fated high school crush become so much more. He told Kurt about Sam and Mercedes, Tina, Elliot. They talked about foods and movies and Broadway and _music_ , god, Kurt’s fully committed himself to his future at Vogue now but he does sing, was in _show choir_ of all things, and Blaine couldn’t help but regale him with Warblers stories and snippets of old sets that he barely remembers on a good day but that bubbled out of him unbidden on that soggy Monday because the beautiful, otherworldly Kurt Hummel can evoke absolutely anything out of him and he’s powerless against it. Anything that Kurt asked for Blaine told him.

The last topic they dared to broach – the slightly-smaller, purple elephant in the room – was when they would finally approach each other face-to-face, to make real genuine human contact. Because after all that had happened, and as badly as Blaine wanted and still wants to just – _hold_ Kurt, in his arms, to _really_ prove that this is all real and happening once and for all, he had to admit that he’s honestly terrified. Living with this small but unbroken buffer of distance between them has shaped so much of how they are together, and removing that is going to be so open and vulnerable and new and _strange_ , raw flesh scrubbed pink-clean and stinging, that even now, Wednesday morning just before noon, Blaine’s awash with equal parts schoolboy excitement and anxious dread just thinking about it.

But for better or worse, Blaine Anderson’s first honest-to-god _date_ with Kurt Hummel, the man he’s in love with, is scheduled for tomorrow night at five-thirty sharp.

“Earth to Blaine,” Sam bellows, right in his ear, and Blaine startles back to reality. “God, are you gonna be like this all the time now?”

Blaine scowls jokingly and pokes Sam in the ribs, making him squirm. “Hey, don’t act like you weren’t _exactly_ like this right after you and Mercedes finally got together for real. I seem to remember you going head-over-handlebars on your bike and barely avoiding a concussion because you spaced out right into a fire hydrant.”

“Okay, well, I’m just saying, Bernadette and Tina and I busted our asses to get you un-fired so you should probably hold up your end of the bargain.” Sam jerks his thumb toward the storefront window of RockShop, where the house keyboard is already set for Blaine, finally dried out after Monday and ready to go.

Yeah, Blaine definitely got kind of fired there for a minute. Running out on his set left Bernadette alone to handle water-proofing the front of the store when the storm hit, and she’d barely managed it in time; a bunch of equipment and a _bunch_ of Blaine’s hard-fought racks of songbooks and sheet music got totally trashed, a pretty hefty financial loss. Danny was, understandably, furious, and spent a good twenty minutes cursing Blaine out and just in general yelling and being Danny on Tuesday morning, effectively destroying Blaine’s high from the previous afternoon. But Sam – now clued in on the entire Kurt saga, and remarkably unfazed – and Tina, in the truest display of friendship Blaine has ever seen, turned up at RockShop to argue Blaine’s case with an amazingly coordinated slew of lies and excuses about a family emergency, and Bernie jumped in as soon as she cottoned on and never betrayed that she knew otherwise, adding in all sorts of things about how great a boss Blaine had always been and how hard he worked – “maybe a little _too_ hard, if you ask me, please, just cut him a break!” – and now, somehow, Blaine isn’t fired, after all. He’s no longer a _branch manager_ , he’s taken a pay-cut and that title now belongs to his former assistant manager Rosco Juarez, but all he has to do to work it all out is play a few times in the un-scheduled open mic hours of the storefront, and give all the busking tips he makes back to the store until he’s worked off the damage from the rain.

Blaine thinks he should maybe feel bad about lying to Danny, but – well, the guy’s always hated him for no reason, so screw him. And Blaine has recently rediscovered that he actually _really_ likes performing.

He takes to the window-stage, keying out a couple of chords to make sure he’s got a feel for the equipment again, and then with no preamble launches into Hungry Like the Wolf. God, it feels _good_ ; it feels natural, to be doing what he’s doing, his hands more limber on the keyboard than they were just a month or so ago, the notes coming naturally to his voice. Sam ducks out of the store and around to the sidewalk in front to watch better, and sings along here and there, on the _doo-doo-doo_ of the chorus. By the time the song is over a woman with a small dog has stopped to watch, too, and Blaine can see a couple people across the street gesturing and spying, clearly discussing him. He grins and moves on to I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You. Bernadette yells “ _Dance dance dance!_ ” from back inside the store. Blaine dances, a little, at the keyboard, legs twisting akimbo at the knee.

Five songs in, Blaine’s got _nine_ people in his streetside audience, and there’s at least forty dollars in the tip box on the wall, and his nerves are alive with the performance high. He’s wound maybe a little more tightly than usual, what with the rollercoaster of a week he’s just had, and the anticipation for his date tomorrow is still lingering in the back of his mind even as a couple of the same college girls from Monday drift back by and _squeal_ at his rendition of Maroon 5’s Misery and his ego gets boosted that much higher. He’s also wound maybe a little more tightly than usual because his body is acutely aware that usually this kind of performance-related euphoria comes in conjunction with specific other kinds of pleasure that he hasn’t exactly had access to lately (see: rollercoaster of a _fucking_ week). Blaine’s doing his best to shake it off, though, except suddenly –

He’s all the way catty-cornered across the intersection way off to Blaine’s left and across the street, but _suddenly –_

It’s Kurt, looking up from where he’s studying on his phone, and he’s wearing sunglasses but Blaine can just _feel_ that they lock eyes all the same, from almost a block away.

Blaine’s thumb falters first, then the rest of his fingers, tripping over the keys and losing the last chorus of the song. He blinks, _hard,_ four or five flabbergasted times, and then forcibly drags his gaze away from Kurt where he’s crossing the street now, heading this way, oh god, oh _god_ , they’re not supposed to even see each other until tomorrow, Blaine was supposed to have time to _prepare_ for this but he’s headed right this way and Blaine’s still obligated to be here for another song and a half –

“Sorry, guys, sorry,” he babbles, to his little accumulated fanbase. “I um. I’m a lot more nervous than I think I’m letting on.” A couple guys chuckle at that, but it’s not laughing _at_ him, it’s as if Blaine’s actually made a joke that they find amusing, and it allows him to kind of take a step back into reality. “We’re gonna call that one done and just move on. Not exactly sure where we’re going just yet, but uh…” His fingers trace out shapes and chords against the keyboard, and Kurt crosses the street again, stepping out onto Blaine’s own sidewalk and getting closer, closer, but not quite edging all the way into Blaine’s little space, still tentative, almost shy. He does take his sunglasses off, though, and he’s close enough that Blaine can finally see his eyes for what color they really are, a deep and sparkling grey-blue, and so full of _something_ that there’s a second where Blaine’s heart just fucking stops.

“ _Oh_ ,” he says, more to himself than anyone else, because –

“ _You think I’m pretty, without any makeup on; you think I’m funny when I tell the punchline wrong. I know you get me, so I let my walls come down, down_.”

As Blaine watches, playing on through like his heart has assumed control of his entire body, Kurt’s cheeks start to color and he curls his arms in on himself, one hand on the opposite elbow, the other pressing against his neck, his chest, tugging on the strap of his bag. He can’t quite figure out where to rest his eyes now, straight on Blaine or bashfully turned away, but Blaine sings _don’t ever look back_ and Kurt smiles so softly and _beautifully_ that all of Blaine’s anxiety just…melts away. So what if they weren’t supposed to meet up until tomorrow evening, and so what if he’s had a rollercoaster of a week at the end of a whole Six Flags of a summer, the pieces of this puzzle so stoutly refusing to lock together – so what, when now, at last, he can sing right at Kurt, sing _to Kurt_ , eyes never leaving him, as if everyone else there on the sidewalk has vanished and they’re the only two people on Earth –

“ _I finally found you, my missing puzzle piece – I’m complete_.”

As he pulls the song to a close, the tiny little crowd he’s drawn erupts into applause, and he scoots out from behind the keyboard and gives a stilted little bow, and thanks them all. It’s while they’re all starting to chat among themselves and disperse that Kurt finally begins to move slowly closer, drifting up from the back of the pack until he’s almost right in front of Blaine, standing on the sidewalk while Blaine’s still up in the storefront window rooted to the spot because Kurt. Is _here_.

He’s more beautiful than Blaine could possibly have dreamed. For the first time in this whole ordeal Blaine can see clearly all of the delicate lines and features of Kurt’s face – the strong masculine edge of his jaw cuts tight through his otherwise more effeminate features, high flushed cheekbones and sweet snub nose, glossy hair and well-groomed eyebrows and candy-pink lips. Blaine’s close enough to see _freckles_. The shirt he’s wearing – an indecently tight Payne’s grey tee silkscreened with a two-tone graphic of what Blaine thinks is Oscar Wilde’s face – makes his physique look even broader, his eyes even more dazzling. It looks like it can’t just be made out of regular t-shirt jersey, smooth and slinky and _touchable_ , Blaine kind of wants to reach out and touch it just to see, lifts his hand across the small gap between them –

And abruptly recoils once his brain catches up with his body, because _Kurt is close enough that Blaine could so easily reach out and **touch him**._

His hand jerks back before it makes contact, and he has to lean very suddenly, very heavily backward against the keyboard on its stand to keep from tumbling straight to the floor as his knees give out. He feels like – whatever the good, amazing version of feeling like you’re going to be sick is. And Kurt, for his part, has been mostly doing slightly-open-mouthed staring of his own, so Blaine hasn’t felt too bad for just unabashedly checking Kurt out, but this is enough to leave him pretty mortified, swooning like a southern belle, and it’s enough to make him finally divert his eyes from the perfect no-longer-anonymous man in front of him, cheeks coloring as his drops his gaze to the ground.

“Hi,” he finally says, soft and pathetic, heart in his throat.

“Hi,” Kurt says back, and his voice is thick and scratchy and high and wonderful, just as vulnerable as Blaine’s own in that moment that it’s enough to draw Blaine’s gaze again; and when they look at each other this time, they really _see_ each other, and Blaine’s heart flip-flops back down to his chest in an effervescent little dance, and he just thinks, Oh, _there_ you are.

“Aaannnd on that note,” mutters a voice from off to Blaine’s right, in the vicinity of RockShop’s front door, and it’s with great horror that he realizes that Sam is still there, and has been watching this deeply personal but also fairly awkward exchange the entire time. Blaine groans, and rolls his head in Sam’s direction, shooting him a look.

“Would you mind maybe getting lost for a couple hours?” he pleads, but Sam just laughs, and tosses Blaine his bag, which he barely catches, a _whumph_ to the chest and his arms sort of fumbling.

“Use protection!” Sam calls, and with a backward wave of his hand he disappears around the corner. The rest of Blaine’s busking audience has cleared out, too, and he and Kurt are alone on the block now, the city bright in the noon-day sun. The silence hangs in the air around them, a moment that feels so private even here on a public street.

Kurt clears his throat, clearly nervous, and then says, “May I help you down?” He raises a hand, elbow-bent, to where Blaine is still standing maybe a foot and a half above ground-level on RockShop’s makeshift stage. It carries all the weight and poise of _may I have this dance_ , but his small, cautious smile isn’t expectant or demanding, just sweet, hopeful, and the most beautiful thing Blaine has ever seen. Blaine shoulders his bag, brushes his sweating palms on the sides of his thighs just once, and then slowly, eyes never leaving Kurt’s own, slips his hand into Kurt’s like coming home.

Blaine leans his weight on Kurt’s offered hand and steps down from the window, on even footing with him now at last – Kurt has a couple inches on him, long and tall and broad in ways that nearly have Blaine swooning again because that’s _so_ doing it for him – and before they can make it even one step away from the store, Blaine’s just absolutely done for, and he bobs up on his toes and presses right in and fits them together,

and kisses him. He can’t _help_ it.

“Oh,” Kurt breathes when Blaine pulls back, blinking slowly, his tongue tracing the lingering Kurt-taste on his lips, and Blaine has just enough wits about him to feel Kurt’s gaze following the movements before Kurt leans back in and kisses _him_ , his hand pulling up from Blaine’s grasp to slide up and skim right down the back of Blaine’s right shoulder, a sweaty-palmed affirmation that steals the breath from Blaine’s chest, because _oh_. Because no amount of fantasy and heartaching across their look-but-can’t-touch nights together, none of the _crazy_ intimate things they’ve done and shared the whole time they’ve known each other could have prepared Blaine for the pure, blissful simplicity of what it is to just be kissing Kurt Hummel. It’s washing over Blaine in tidal waves, now, that this is _real_ , that the man in his arms is tangible, touchable, _tastable_ , breathing Blaine’s breath into him, thrumming and alive right there in Blaine’s space and not an alleyway and a whole world away. Blaine’s been in love with him for so long but he never could have imagined this, the sweet sting of being able to touch his skin, the tight wrench in his chest at Kurt’s soft little sounds, their heartbeats slamming together where their chests are pressed close even in the too-hot noonday sun – every little detail is a _gift_ , tiny things that other people doubtless take for granted when they can listen and touch and taste their lovers every day but that Blaine will still be finding the beauty in if he stays with Kurt a hundred years, a thousand. It feels like falling in love with him all over again. It has been worth the months of uncertainty and torment and longing, finding release together but always sleeping alone, if Blaine gets to have this kiss.

There’s a wetness to things after a moment and Blaine realizes abruptly that he’s crying, _again_. “Shit,” he whispers, “not again, I didn’t mean to – “

“No,” says Kurt, and when Blaine pulls back just far enough to look again he sees that Kurt is crying too, just a little, tears tracking down the high apples of his cheeks and licking at the corners of his mouth. He laughs, just two short giggling bursts, and Blaine laughs too out of sheer wonderment. He’s honestly tempted to pinch himself again.

Instead, he desperately tries to regain some modicum of composure. “So,” he manages, “our um, we had, I know we’d planned on – tomorrow, dinner – ”

“Today, lunch?” Kurt offers instead. “I’m so sorry, I just wanted to surprise you, if you have other – ”

“No no!” Blaine says, “no, I’m – fine, we can go right now, lunch or coffee or anything, I don’t have to, just let me – do you like Greek food?” He forces his back a little straighter, makes himself look Kurt straight in his lake-clear blue eyes without faltering. God damnit, Blaine wants to do this _right_.

Kurt, adorably, appears to do his version of the same, his shoulders settling, a bird righting its feathers. He slips his sunglasses back on. “Yes,” he answers, voice breathy but firm, his smile wide and almost blinding. He tucks his hand tightly back into Blaine’s, squeezing and swinging them a little, and Blaine knows a hint when he sees one: he grins stupidly back, and with their hands still linked, starts tugging and leading Kurt down the block, onward to the first date of the rest of their lives.

\--

They’re seated promptly, a little table-for-two right in front with sunlight spilling across it from one small window and a single, heat-wilted flower in a bud vase in the center. Blaine, trying to be a gentleman, pulls Kurt’s chair out for him to sit, and seats himself on the side of the table where the sun will be slamming him irritatingly in the eyes. He sees Kurt mostly in perfect-sloped silhouette.

“This place is so charming,” Kurt says, sipping his complimentary water. “I didn’t even know it was here.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a hole in the wall, by my boss took us here once for a staff thing and we all got hooked. They do lunch better than dinner.” Blaine holds his hand up to his face, trying to block out the sun, but it’s useless. Kurt wordlessly offers his sunglasses, but Blaine chuckles, and declines.

“I admit I haven’t done Greek a whole lot but when I do we usually go to that place Kefi, on the Upper West? It’s kind of near – “

“Oh my gosh, no, I totally know where Kefi is!” says Blaine, smiling. “Near the Park? My friend Elliot lives up in Harlem, like, just beyond Morningside, we’ve been there before definitely – “

“Yeah, that’s right where Santana’s girlfriend Dani lives, too,” says Kurt. The info clicks in Blaine’s brain, suddenly, and his hand jolts out to rest on top of Kurt’s on the tabletop.

“I _know_ Dani!” he says. “She and Elliot live in the same building, and I’ve seen her band play at _least_ twice. I think – I think I might even have met Santana, at the – “

“The Fourth of July party!” Kurt finishes, eyes bright with amazement. His hand shifts under Blaine’s until they’re palm-to-palm. “I can’t believe it. This city is so big and yet it’s so small.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” says Blaine, his thumb stroking against the thin skin of the inside of Kurt’s wrist. “Maybe even – even if we’d never seen each other that night, maybe we’d still have met, someday. Through Elliot and Santana. Maybe we were…”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt says, and his tone is – _teasing,_ god, it’s incredible to hear the real-life aural manifestation of that winky-face emoji Blaine’s been associating with him for so long; Kurt is going to be surprising him in so many new and beautiful ways for so _long_ – “were you about to say we were _meant to be together_?” His eyebrow is raised so sharp and stunning, full of the most perfect sass, but his smile is too delighted to be cruel, and Blaine blushes, but doesn’t break his gaze (such as it were; damn that sunlight).

“And if I was?” he says.

“I would have to call you a terribly hopeless romantic.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

A waitress arrives to take their orders. Blaine orders the same thing he always gets – it’s hard to stray when it’s so good – but then immediately stiffens with worry that it’s going to make his breath too terrible for kissing later. And maybe it’s presumptuous to be thinking ahead to more kisses, but the ones they’ve shared so far have been _decadent_ , bordering on life-changing, and he doesn’t think he could possibly leave Kurt later today without at least a couple more before they part. He misses what Kurt orders entirely, too caught up in the melodic lilt of his voice tripping effortlessly over the Greek words; god, but Blaine can just _hear_ in it the way Kurt must sing, full of breath and power and grace, and he hopes beyond hoping that he’ll get Kurt out to a karaoke night or even up onto RockShop’s window-stage with him sometime soon, because he wants nothing more than to hear it. Kurt catches him staring, but just smiles, and stares back, no judgment, no uneasiness. Blaine’s heart swells and throbs in his chest.

Their conversation flows easily, but then also – doesn’t, sometimes. Blaine’s certain Kurt can feel it too: they’ll be carrying on as if they’ve known each other for years, or at least for a _real_ four months and not the windows-and-text-messages whirlwind they’ve actually had, and then one of them will notice how strange it is to feel so at ease so quickly and kind of recoil, making things clumsy and stilted for a few beats until they find their rhythm again. It’s so heartbreakingly _real_ , little glitches in the otherwise movie-perfect picture of them together, that Blaine feels like he could fly.

It’s real. He’s learning Kurt’s birthday (he’s a Gemini) and favorite color (blue – not a surprise) and Girl Scout cookie of choice (Thin Mints on a good day, Tagalongs on a bad one) and it’s real, he is really having lunch with Kurt because they’re in love and they came here together just because they _could_ and all of this is something real and true, that he is actually allowed to have in this world, because – and he sings it in his head, barely manages to keep from singing it _aloud_ – somewhere in his youth or childhood, he must have done something _good_.

Aloud what he says instead is, “I love you.” His voice sound disgustingly besotted even to himself and Blaine doesn’t even care.

Kurt squeezes at his hand on the tabletop again. “I love you too,” he says. His cheeks color with it a little, though, and he has to blink his eyes away, just for a second. “God, it’s so – my dad was so right about it.”

“Your dad?” Blaine’s learning, very quickly, about Kurt’s relationship with his father, about how close they are and how precious it is to him. It’s almost, _almost_ enough to make him jealous.

“When my dad met my stepmother – actually, I introduced them, it’s kind of a stupidly funny story that I’ll tell you later – ” Kurt chuckles more to himself than to Blaine. “But they met and it felt like they just _knew_. That they were in love and that was it for them. They got married before the year was out because it was just like – why wait, you know? When you know you _know_. And he’s always said I’d be the same way.” He seems to sort of realize what he’s saying, suddenly, and his gaze is back on Blaine in an instant. “Not that I’m saying that – that we should – you _know_ what I mean,” he finishes with an adorably flustered little huff. “I just mean that it’s very rare for me to even consider using the quote-unquote L-word on people, even my dearest friends. But I’ve only known you for this summer and already I just can’t imagine why I _wouldn’t_.”

Blaine’s breath catches, and he can’t stand it any more, doesn’t care what his mouth tastes like – he cranes his neck up and across the table toward Kurt and Kurt meets him halfway, kissing sharp and sweet and olive-oily over their mostly-finished lunches. It’s not a particularly deep or scandalizing kiss but it curls all the way down to Blaine’s toes anyway, especially when Kurt starts smiling wide and happy into the end of it before they settle back down in their seats.

“Oh, hang on,” Kurt murmurs. “Yours didn’t have – shellfish, did it?”

Blaine’s eyes bug a little. “No, I don’t think so – god, are you allergic? I should have – ”

“It’s okay,” says Kurt. “It’s – pretty mild, I don’t go into shock or anything. The swelling just isn’t terribly sexy.” He flashes Blaine a cheeky wink. “I’m sorry, I’m just so used to people being aware of it that I forgot – ”

“That I wouldn’t know,” Blaine finishes. “God, I hate that I don’t know. I feel like I have so much catching up to do.” He gets an idea, suddenly, and his tongue fumbles in his mouth as his haste to get it out wars with his hesitance at how dumb it is. “What if we – ”

“Hmm?”

“If we each tell each other something about ourselves that no one else knows,” Blaine says, kind of lamely. “Like a little way to have a leg up on each other’s friends, just in case we ever feel – out of the loop. I don’t know, it sounded better in my head.”

“No,” says Kurt, “I love it. I’m just having a hard time thinking of – oh, okay: does it count if only _one_ other person knows it?”

Blaine pretends to consider this very seriously. “Hmm, I don’t know – ”

“If it makes a difference, it’s _very_ embarrassing.”

“I’ll allow it,” Blaine says.

“How gracious of you,” Kurt teases back. “Okay, so, it’s about my tattoo.”

“Oh!” says Blaine. “I’d – almost forgotten. But I’ve seen it there. The one on your back.”

“Yes,” Kurt says. “Okay, so, I got the tattoo my freshman year of college, when Rachel and I decided we needed to be ‘rebellious’ for some reason – I guess because we hadn’t ever really done it in high school. The tattoo says ‘It’s got Bette Midler’ – ”

“ _What_?”

“I know, I know, just wait for it. It’s got Bette Midler – as far as everyone else is concerned, it’s an inside joke between me and Rachel about Wind Beneath My Wings that we refuse to let anyone else in on lest it lose its meaning. Perhaps not the choicest thing to have permanently inked on one’s body, but I was nineteen, I was irresponsible, no shade. However…”

“However?” Blaine echoes, raising his eyebrow and grinning to himself a little.

“…It was actually _supposed_ to say ‘It gets better,’ like the old pride campaign, or whatever,” says Kurt. “Which – also not the world’s greatest tattoo choice, but again. Except genius Hummel over here was perhaps a little bit underage-intoxicated when drawing up the concept for the artist, and what I initially ended up with was – “ and he over-enunciates to really drive it home – “ _It’s get better._ ”

“No,” Blaine gasps, getting a little dramatic himself.

“And it was _entirely_ my own fault so I almost couldn’t even get mad about it! I went back a couple days later in a clearer state of mind and he mercifully changed it to the Bette Midler thing free of charge. To this day Rachel is forbidden to speak of it, with the consequences being that if she does, I will reveal one of _her_ painful secrets.” Kurt narrows his eyes imperiously and Blaine chuckles at the absurdity of it all. “I’m holding you to that as well, I’ll have you know.”

“Understood,” Blaine says, still laughing.

“Well, all right then,” says Kurt. “I’m done embarrassing myself for your amusement – it’s your turn. Tell me one thing no one knows about Blaine Anderson.”

His breezy-cool blue gaze is far too penetrating for Blaine’s own good, and Blaine’s smile falters, just a little. He takes a quick drink from what’s left of his water. “Okay,” he says, trying to figure out the best way to couch it. “Okay. Do you know those commercials from a few years back – super cheesy catchy jingle – the Free Credit Rating Today website?”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Kurt says, and his eyes bug to twice their size, his whole face washing over in a scandalized grin. “I sincerely hope you are about to tell me you hooked up with the hot Free Credit Rating guy, because we _still_ talk about that ad sometimes when we are dreaming of better lives with sexier men, you have to understand – ”

Blaine recoils, hands up and away from the table. “Whoa, whoa, ew, _no_. That’s my brother.”

There’s a beat of silence between them as they each sort of absorb what the other is saying. Blaine’s hands slowly lower back down to the table, and Kurt is the first one to speak. “ _Oh_ ,” he says. “Well, um. That is certainly a killer gene pool the two of you hopped out of.”

Blaine sighs. “My mom had Cooper with her first husband, before my dad came along, and me,” he says. “My friends know that I _have_ a brother, but – I don’t ever really talk about him, and they’re really good about just accepting that. We’re not exactly…close.”

Kurt treads delicately, the tone of their conversation shifted. “Is there more to this story as part of this things-nobody-knows conversation?”

“I mean, I guess, kind of,” Blaine says. “Cooper’s eleven years older than me, so I was just clearing elementary school when he graduated from college and immediately left for L.A. to try to make it big in showbusiness. Considering I was already in high school when he was doing that awful commercial – oh, come on,” he says, when Kurt reacts, “you have to admit it’s terrible – Coop hasn’t exactly had the greatest Hollywood career.”

“I guess not.”

“So when it started looking like I was really interested in pursuing performance, too, my parents kind of…shut me right down,” says Blaine, and oh, this is things he really _hasn’t_ told anyone else, and he can feel his whole chest clenching up with it. “They told me I had to focus on something more reliable, more sustainable, or they – they weren’t going to help me through school. I was a responsible kid, but I was focused way more on school and extracurricular stuff than on ever even thinking about getting a high school job, so I couldn’t afford to refuse.”

“Oh, honey,” Kurt says softly.

The story’s pouring out of him now, and it’s cathartic but also a little terrifying all at once. “I had great grades, so I enrolled at NYU Stern. I made it about three semesters before I realized how much I absolutely hated it.” God, this is so _much._ It’s so easy to think about it so cut-and-dry when you never say it out loud; having Kurt, beautiful artistic fearless Kurt, right across from him listening to it all, Blaine has to take three or four huge, fortifying breaths, and can’t quite look him in the eye. “So I withdrew. And I mean, I kind of – _withdrew_. My boyfriend and I broke up and I kind of tried to escape the whole world for a little while. When I snapped out of it, I finished out getting an associate’s degree with my stuff that transferred over, and started working at RockShop, and living with my friend Tina. And that’s what I’ve been doing, I guess, until now. I still perform a little bit sometimes but I just…” He trails off, staring down at his lap. “Sorry, is it in poor taste to say ‘I don’t like this game any more’ when the game was my idea in the first place?”

“Maybe a little,” Kurt admits, but the teasing isn’t unkind, and he reaches across the table for Blaine’s hand again, holding it tightly. “Thank you – so much, for sharing that with me, Blaine. You didn’t have to do all this.”

“I wanted to,” he says finally. “You deserve it.”

“And _you_ deserve better parents,” Kurt says soundly. “I’m sorry, but if it had been me, and my father, he never would have made me give up on something like that.” He pauses, his lips pressed thin. “If I had known you then, I wouldn’t have let you.”

“Kurt,” Blaine breathes, his eyes a little wet. Kurt leans across the table and kisses him again.

“Okay,” Kurt declares, “here’s another lesson about Kurt Hummel’s life: I firmly believe that everything is better with cake.” Blaine laughs at that, and the way it makes Kurt smile is _everything_. “Let’s order way too much dessert and go back to talking about show choir and kittens or something. Oh! Your cat! How is she doing?”

“She killed this _huge_ moth that got into my apartment the other night, it was scary and also kind of awesome,” says Blaine, immensely grateful for the topic change. He launches off into the story of Coconut’s riveting hunt for enormous bugs, and when the waitress loops back around they get two giant plates of ekmek kataifi that they share generously between the two of them. The tightness in Blaine’s chest slowly breaks loose and eases, in a way he almost can’t believe, and if possible, he falls even _more_ in love with this stone-strong angel of a man across the table. Kurt is the single most incredible thing that’s ever happened to him.

He’s just opened his mouth to tell him so when Kurt’s gaze flickers down to Blaine’s mouth, and he giggles a little. “Oh, um, some of that clotted cream, you might wanna.” He motions at his face with his hand. Blaine shifts his face just a little – oh, yeah, he can kind of feel where it might be – but in a sudden rush of flirty cheesiness, he plays dumb.

“Where?” he asks, dabbing his napkin on the wrong side of his mouth, stretching his tongue out to try to reach. “Did I get it?”

“I see how it is,” Kurt drawls, not buying the act for a second. He rolls his eyes a little, but then his hand is reaching out to cup Blaine’s cheek, and he thumbs across the spot where the cream is still lingering, his fingers warm and firm against Blaine’s jaw in a way he’s kind of – overwhelmingly into. When Kurt’s thumb has wiped it clean he drags it back closer to Blaine’s mouth in a soft little stroke, and Blaine totally lets it happen: he curves his lips out around the pad of Kurt’s thumb, mouthing the sweet cream right off and licking through to his skin below, whisper-soft and slow and honestly way, way too dirty for a restaurant in broad daylight. Even as cool as Kurt tries to play it, his grip trembles and his breath hitches.

“You’re terrible,” he admonishes as he withdraws his hand, his heart not at all in it.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Blaine says, his big-eyed innocence turned on full-bore, “it’s just, you’ve never had a problem with it in public before.” His tongue runs out over his lower lip, ostensibly checking for the last residue of the cream. Kurt’s eyes visibly track its motion.

“This may be the first first date I ever put out on,” Kurt breathes.

They box up the rest of the kataifi and take it to go.


	8. (Chapter 6b)

The ride back to Blaine’s place – or, possibly, Kurt’s place; Blaine’s still not entirely sure which apartment they’re currently headed to – is _almost_ enough to cool them off. “Cool” being figurative, of course, since it’s still the clinging-on tail end of August, not quite so hot as to be unbearable but still enough to be unpleasant, but it’s hard to maintain that air of eager intimacy between them when they’re on a subway train (less oppressive heat-wise, more oppressive stench-wise) and then the bus (cleaner but sweatier) down into Queens, surrounded by other miserable, overheated people, pressing through the mid-afternoon scramble of trying to beat out the worst of rush hour. (Hard to maintain, but not impossible – Blaine’s arm stretched up to hold onto the grip rail overhead extends and exposes his torso, and Kurt’s is the same, their chests pressed close even with the heat, their other hands tangled together at their sides. For all that Blaine wishes they were just _there_ already, he feels enraptured by the way time seems to slow, their world narrowed to the pinpoint of each other in a wash of all kinds of heat.)

Up in Blaine’s apartment, though, Kurt tosses the takeout bag onto the kitchen counter and then leads Blaine to his own bedroom. Because of course he knows exactly where it is by now, doesn’t even have to think about it – god, Blaine’s head is reeling with it, still caught inescapably on _this is real, this is **real**_ like a broken record – and while Blaine’s doing a quick sweep of the room, making sure Coconut isn’t stuck in there with them before he shuts the door, Kurt is –

Blaine turns back around and Kurt is flat on his back in Blaine’s bed, his arms thrown up around his head and his boots dangling off the other end. His eyes are closed, his lips parted just slightly, and like this every breath he takes is hyper-visible, his broad chest straining against his tight T-shirt. After just a second he opens his eyes again and looks right at Blaine, his mouth twisting into the slightest smile.

Blaine has _literally dreamed_ of this moment, and here it is, happening in real time. His bedroom window is closed but here is Kurt, Kurt is _here_ , not out the window in another apartment and another world but sprawled in the mess of Blaine’s sheets, and waiting for Blaine to join him.

Breathlessly, his vision spiking around the edges, Blaine crosses down to the foot of the bed. He toes out of his own shoes, then reaches for Kurt’s, one by one, unlacing the thick boots and carefully setting them on the floor next to his own loafers. Kurt smiles wider and wiggles his sock feet once they’re free, making Blaine grin, too. He takes one in his hands and rolls his thumbs right into the arch of it, and Kurt twists, knees knocking a little closer together.

“Blaine,” he breathes.

Blaine rests first his knee, then his hands in the small gap of space between Kurt’s shins. When he’s all the way off the floor, he steadies himself with one hand to the outside of Kurt’s thigh, and traces his other up the whole expanse of Kurt’s leg in his slim lightweight trousers – the knobs of his ankle, up the hard bone to his knee. His fingers tuck into the divot behind Kurt’s knee and Kurt squirms again, laughing breathlessly this time, sitting up just a little on his elbows. Blaine bends to kiss that spot through his pants instead.

“What are you doing, oh my goodness – “

“Learning,” says Blaine, crawling further up Kurt’s body now, balancing better on his knees so he can stroke both hands up the hard, thick muscles of Kurt’s thighs. “I want to learn the whole thing.” God, Kurt is so warm, so _strong_ beneath his hands, it’s intoxicating, Blaine’s mind going cloudy even as his senses strain to capture every detail, and when his thumbs dig harder up the line of Kurt’s inseam, the heaving gasp Kurt gives is definitely not laughter this time. Blaine can see Kurt’s cock throb in his snug pants right in front of his eyes.

“Blaine, please…”

“Shhh,” says Blaine, smiling up at him. He presses one soft, barely-there kiss to the bulge of Kurt’s cock, but then moves on. His thumbs dig in around Kurt’s sharp hipbones and he keeps crawling forward. He untucks Kurt’s tee from his waistband and nudges the fabric up until his trembling, tight-flat stomach is exposed, and Blaine kisses and strokes there, too, tasting the salt-sweet skin – _god,_ it’s heady, Blaine whimpers out a little moan of his own – and wrapping his hands around the smallest part of Kurt’s waist. When his tongue swirls into Kurt’s bellybutton, Kurt falls flat onto his back again in favor of sinking his fingers tight into Blaine’s hair.

“Ohhh my god,” Kurt says. Blaine smiles into his stomach.

He catalogues them – the back of the knee, the bellybutton, that space high on his ribs but only on the right side, all the places that make Kurt squirm, make his hips ruck up into Blaine’s own where their cocks harden against each other’s bodies. As Blaine nudges higher and higher up Kurt’s torso the t-shirt rolls up and, eventually (when Kurt gets irritated with it), off, his creamy white torso on glorious display, flushed pink down his sternum, his nipples pointed tight. And Blaine could pull back, to stare down at the newly revealed beauty underneath him, but Blaine has – seen it, before, even if it was just from a distance. What Blaine hasn’t done ever before is touched him. What Blaine hasn’t done ever before is _tasted him_ , or breathed the scent of him in, mouthing wet and loose over the barely-there crease underneath Kurt’s pectorals, as his hands slip between Kurt and his light summer duvet to roam the smooth hot expanse of his back. Blaine can’t help but dig his fingertips tighter and tighter, clutching and holding on. _This is real. This is real_. He rolls the nub of Kurt’s nipple between his teeth and Kurt keens out high and almost musical. There’s another.

“Blaine,” Kurt finally whines, “Blaine, _kiss me_ ,” and Blaine can’t ignore the direct request. He lifts his mouth from the mark it’s been sucking into Kurt’s collarbone, lifts the hand he’s not using to prop himself up away from the grip he has on the hard swell of Kurt’s thick bicep, and finally, finally, cups around Kurt’s cheek and kisses him. It’s heavy, sensual, a dense press of a kiss that doesn’t break out of the pace Blaine is setting, even as Kurt’s skilled tongue glides into Blaine’s mouth and plunders deep, sucking at him, teeth scraping. Blaine can feel the roll of Kurt’s jaw working under his hand and the _hunger_ of it throbs low in his gut, arousal mixed with knowing sympathy. Blaine wants to _devour_ him. They kiss slow but unrelenting, both of them gasping into the wet clutch of their mouths.

When Kurt’s hands steal down to cup two huge palmfuls of Blaine’s ass, he gives up on hovering over him, and lets his arm buckle down to his elbow till they’re flush against each other from mouth to thighs, the hand not cradling Kurt’s face slipping around under his hard shoulders. Kurt tugs Blaine’s hips one way and gives a little twist of his own in the other and _there_ , _fuck_ , their cocks align just right snug up against one another and Blaine’s blood thrums like singing in his veins, chest and stomach heaving with breath where the weight of his own body is crushing him into Kurt. Kurt hums into the kiss and Blaine’s lips buzz with it, and underneath him, Kurt’s hips and his thighs start shifting, just enough, a slow and devastating grind that winds Blaine like a crank. He’s been so turned on for so _long –_

“I want to learn you too, you know,” Kurt murmurs, nipping sloppy along Blaine’s jaw and around to his ear. “I’ve wanted to have you like this for months. Even in bed with him I dreamed about you. But now we’ve got all the time in the world.” He shoves his tongue back in Blaine’s mouth, and gropes tighter around his ass, tugging their hips harder together, his middle finger pressing hard at the crease between Blaine’s cheeks through his pants. “And I just want you to come.”

Blaine draws back, just far enough to look into Kurt’s heavy-lidded eyes. The weight of his gaze is honey-thick and so loaded full of desire, full of _everything_ , and Blaine realizes: it’s always going to be like this. Even if Blaine learns every inch of Kurt’s skin inside and out, the smell and the touch and the taste, the path they’ve had to take to come together like this will be the same, and Blaine’s whole body will always electrify the most knowing that Kurt is _looking_ right at him, watching and waiting to take him the fuck apart. They can fall in love and be together a hundred years (and god, Blaine hopes they are, and then some), and this will never stop being the best sex Blaine has ever had, because under Kurt’s hungry, criminally beautiful stare – from an alleyway away, or wrapped up in his amazingly solidly _real_ body, touching everywhere two people can touch at once – Blaine feels like he’s coming alive.

“Kurt,” Blaine breathes, and he comes, just like that, eyes locked with Kurt’s through the whole thing.

Kurt kisses him as he pulls through it, keeps kissing him all over his face, at his cheeks and his chin and the corners of his eyes. And once the brightest tightest parts of it are over Blaine finds Kurt’s mouth with his again, kissing him through his trembling aftershocks, rolling his hips softer and looser against Kurt’s own as he drifts back to himself, still slow but lighter, more languid, drinking Kurt up. Kurt has him, and he has Kurt, his bed’s got _Kurt_ in it. Blaine plans to be excited and thankful and otherwise just _totally all about_ that for a long, long time to come.  

As the thick edge of it clears off, Blaine starts to realize some things. They haven’t even taken all their clothes off, first of all, and here Blaine is coming in his pants like he’s fifteen, even if Kurt had totally done that on purpose. He also realizes that _Kurt_ still hasn’t come yet, and he immediately wants nothing more than to make that happen, his hips shuffling so his thigh wedges up harder against Kurt’s thick erection, trying to work his thrusts just right even as his dreamy afterglow sets in. But Kurt grabs tight on Blaine’s hips and rolls them, till Blaine’s sort of half-under him instead of the other way around, their hips overlapping off-center and Kurt’s ankle hooked around Blaine’s at the foot of the bed.

“All the time in the world,” he says again, with a sweet little secret grin. “Come on, let’s get naked.”

Blaine doesn’t need to be told twice. While Kurt wriggles away, unfastening his complicated-looking belt, Blaine swiftly tugs loose his own bowtie and shucks his polo shirt, tossing them toward his desk chair. His pants are another matter – they’re sticky with release, kind of gross even as amazing as it was, and he eases himself out of them, toeing the chinos and his boxer-briefs down to the end of the bed and nudging them to the floor there, trying not to think about how yucky they’re going to be later. But it’s easy to forget about that when Kurt returns, and he’s so, _so_ naked, his long milky thighs even stronger and softer-looking up close, his hard cock jutting eager toward Blaine as he kneels back up onto the bed next to him, sitting on his heels. Kurt wraps a hand around his own cock and tugs, just once or twice, a rhythm it delights Blaine to see that he recognizes. Blaine sits up sideways on one elbow and watches.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, unable to _not_ say it, the compliment tripping off his tongue.

“You, too,” says Kurt, eyes roving up and down Blaine’s newly-revealed body. “God, you’re so _tight_ , aren’t you, it’s more than I could ever tell from over there.” He sets a hand on Blaine’s bicep, drags it down along Blaine’s arm and then to his hip, his ass, his thigh, an abbreviated version of Blaine’s earlier explorations. Blaine watches Kurt watch him, touch him, but his eyes keep drifting back to Kurt’s cock, long and pink and – yeah, mouthwatering.

“Please let me suck your cock,” he says. “I know you said – but _I_ want _you_ to come, too, you know, just let me – “

“Lie back,” Kurt says, so Blaine does, rolls all the way onto his back again and nestles up into the pillows, and Kurt swings one leg over Blaine’s chest, still on his knees, and then shuffles up, up, up until he’s straddled high across Blaine’s chest, his hard thighs flexing and his cock just _right there_ , this is just like the time when they –

“Yeah,” Kurt says, agreeing with things Blaine hasn’t even said out loud, and he pitches his hips forward till the head of his cock is skating wet across Blaine’s lips. “Oh – _oh_.”

Blaine sucks it up into his mouth, just the head, letting his mouth go plush and soft around the hard thickness of him. God, the way he _tastes_ , the way his big cock feels filling Blaine’s mouth, it’s indescribable and Blaine needs to have more – he cups his hands up around Kurt’s ass (god that _ass_ ) and tugs forward, just a little, opening up for Kurt as he slides inside. They should probably have a condom for this but Blaine doesn’t _care_ , is sure Kurt would have said something if there was cause for any real concern, and anyway all he wants in this life right now is to suck Kurt’s cock, his cheeks hollowing out around it as Kurt’s hips roll smoothly forward and push it deeper in. There’s a tension that’s gone from Blaine’s body post-orgasm and he lets the easiness ebb through him, sucking tight but sloppily, careless about gagging if Kurt’s hips roll too hard or the drool eking from the corner of his lips. Blaine is content to touch all over Kurt’s thighs and his incredible ass and let Kurt use his mouth to get off, tonguing into the wet slit of him, savoring the thick musky taste. It’s such a real, human flavor across his tongue, more concrete five-senses details that Blaine wants to store away and keep inside him forever, not just the taste and weight of a cock but of _Kurt’s_ cock, of Kurt inside of his mouth, his body, heavy and sharp and vibrating with life and sex.

“Fuck, how are you so good at this,” Kurt whines, hitching his hips up and down and forward, forward into Blaine’s mouth. “If I could’ve seen your _lips_ better from across the street I would’ve come over ages ago, god, _oh_ – “ He stills just a little, falters, as Blaine presses his tongue harder and wetter up into the vein on the underside of Kurt’s cock. “I kind of – wanted you to fuck me, but I could just – do this, oh, _Blaine_ …”

He keeps fucking into Blaine’s mouth, but Blaine stiffens, tightens, and against his thigh his soft spent cock surges just a little bit fuller. He hasn’t been so ready to go again so quickly in _ages_ , but the thought of being inside Kurt – the thought of Kurt _wanting_ Blaine to be inside him, hoping for it, after all this, wanting just what Blaine wants, being so wholly on the same page – is enough to push out the afterglow-fogginess that’s been leaving Blaine loose and lazy and have him grabbing harder, handsier at Kurt’s ass. Like their spontaneous sexting all those weeks ago, Blaine burrows his fingertips down into Kurt’s crack, squeezing his cheeks and tripping just faintly over his hot, winking hole. Kurt’s lips turn up in a little grin.

“Yeah?” he says, voice breathy and as low-pitched as Blaine has heard it yet, and Blaine whimpers around his mouthful of cock and does his best to nod. His cock swells even harder.

Kurt gives five or six last lingering thrusts into Blaine’s mouth, deeper and slower and more _forceful_ than they’ve been, clipping at his throat, and then slowly slides out, dragging his cockhead along the wet inside of Blaine’s bottom lip as he pulls back, his precome streaking Blaine’s chin along with the saliva that’s leaked out there already. He rests his weight more fully on Blaine’s chest, his asscheeks spilling fuller into Blaine’s grabby palms, and reaches one hand back to curl around Blaine’s cock, stroking it tight and smooth.

“Fuck, Kurt,” Blaine says, his eyes glazing over as he tries to watch everything at once. Kurt’s touch feels so _good_ , way too amazing for just a hand on his cock, and he feels himself stiffen and swell to fill Kurt’s grip. The world of his bedroom seems hyper-real, brighter than it makes sense for it to be with the curtains still drawn.

“You have stuff – in here?” Kurt asks, gesturing with the hand that’s not on Blaine’s dick to the little night-stand next to his bed, and Blaine nods, sitting up a little more so he can reach over and fumble into the drawer. He finds his lube right away, and a condom with a little more digging. Kurt smiles, and bends down to kiss him, once on the mouth and then again just under his left eye. It’s not enough for Blaine, though, and he drops the stuff on the mattress, uses that hand to cradle Kurt’s head back down to his, and kisses him deeper and thicker. He can feel the moment Kurt tastes himself inside Blaine’s mouth because his hand on Blaine’s cock curls tighter, fingers splaying out on the downstroke to scratch through the thick of Blaine’s hair there. It kind of tickles but it mostly just feels _so good_ and Blaine smiles in to the kiss before he lets Kurt go.

Kurt picks up the lube and presses it into Blaine’s hand, and just says, “Please?”

Blaine’s breath all exhales out of him at once, because _yes_. He cranes his back, sits up a little more, until Kurt is forced to shuffle back off his chest and sit more across his stomach, his hips, Blaine’s cock close up to Kurt’s ass but not quite touching, not yet. Kurt rises a little higher onto his knees and braces himself on Blaine’s shoulders, his weight heavy and reassuring, while Blaine spreads some lube onto his fingers and then slowly reaches back, his dry hand peeling Kurt’s left cheek up away from his right so that his other can slip down the crack of him and smear against his hole. God, Kurt’s _ass_ – the two peach-halves of it are so soft but so _solid_ in his hands, and his entrance is tight and white-hot where it clenches at Blaine’s fingertips, first one and then two pressing hard until they catch and breach. Kurt’s starting to _sweat_ above him, the smell of him stronger and even more intoxicating, a little bead dripping down from his chin and onto Blaine’s chest. Blaine can’t help it, has to kiss him again.

“More,” Kurt mouths against Blaine’s lips, “Blaine, please.” So Blaine gives him more, squeezes tight to his handful of ass as his fingers push deeper inside, Kurt’s darkest hottest places, the walls and rings of him clamping impossibly tight around Blaine’s questing touch.

God, this is _everything_ Blaine’s dreamed of, when he’d roll back to bed after being with Kurt through the windows of their separate apartments. It was amazing, watching and being watched, feeling that spark flare to new life inside of him where he hadn’t even known there was one. But all of his friends have been right – he doesn’t do just sex, and he doesn’t do _loneliness_. Blaine needs to be so close and intimate, buried in the man he loves just as much metaphorically as literally, and the snug press of their bodies together, the tight tug of Kurt’s hole around his fingers, is more than he ever thought he would get but exactly what he’s always wanted. His heart is so full of Kurt and everything he is to Blaine that Blaine needs the _whole_ of him, in every facet of his life, across the street and out to lunch and on the phone and in his bed, his voice free to listen to, his skin free to touch. Blaine stops groping Kurt’s ass with his free hand and instead sweeps it down around his forehead, brushing his hair away from where it’s sticking to his sweaty skin, and kissing him again.

“I love you,” he says, the most earnestly he has yet.

“Fuck me,” says Kurt, just as intently.

Blaine laughs and gives him a small kiss and then slowly, regretfully slides his fingers out of Kurt’s incredible ass, wiping the extra lube against his own thigh before reaching out for the condom. He has more success tearing into it than he thought he might – he is a _bit_ out of practice – and together with Kurt, he rolls it down onto his own leaking-slick cock, and then more lube, Kurt’s skillful hot hand curled around him again. It’s finally too much for Blaine to take. He has to be inside.

He bats Kurt’s hand out of the way and holds his cock with his own, angled up straight and steady for Kurt to sink back down on. Their hands join in a grip on Kurt’s right hip as he sits up, up, and then back _down,_ Blaine’s cock sliding home right up inside of him until he’s seated all the way around him, clenching hot-tight- _hot_ around every inch of him, Blaine holding him full and open.

“Oh my god,” Blaine breathes.

“Oh my _god_ ,” says Kurt, eyes wide, back arched tight. He doesn’t move just yet, so neither does Blaine, but he watches the rise and fall of Kurt’s chest and syncs himself to it, inhale-exhale, growing heavy and labored with sex, each subtle shift conducted down to Blaine’s aching cock like electricity. After eight or nine shaky, forced-steady breaths, Kurt gives one little hitch of his hips, just one, a tiny rolling pivot, and Blaine’s hands on his hips go white-knuckled tight because even that one tiny movement is enough to have every nerve in Blaine’s whole body lighting up like a Christmas tree.

“Is that – ”

“Oh, fuck, Kurt, oh, _oh_ – ”

“Blaine I have to move, I just – ”

“Yes _please_ – ”

Kurt moves. His thrusts pick up that same slow, rolling rhythm, thighs coiling and working where they’re spread wide around Blaine’s body, powerful and effortless as his hot snug _perfect_ ass rides Blaine’s cock and all Blaine can do is follow along. It’s more grinding than real up-and-down thrusts, at least at first, and Blaine’s had wilder, crazier, more vigorous sex than this for sure, but none of it has ever felt half this good – this _right_. Blaine’s cock _throbs_ inside of Kurt, reacting so intensely to even the smallest shifts of his ass around it, the slide lube-smooth but staggeringly tight. He tries to give a few needy, sloppy upward thrusts of his own but he barely has the fortitude, not when Kurt seems to be handling most of the work just fine, and downright _destroying_ him with it. Blaine didn’t know it could _be_ like this. His mind grows groggy, lust-drunk and senses blurring, only the bright white clarity of Kurt in any kind of real focus. He wants to touch him everywhere, wants closer, _more_ , but his hands seem too grabby and clumsy for what he really wants and he can’t make them cooperate. He wants to carefully, painstakingly traverse the map he’s still making of every sweet smooth contour of Kurt’s skin, of the body underneath, thick muscle and fine bone, webs of veins thrumming with their all-but-synchronized heartbeat, to do just the right things with his hands to press _I love yous_ wordlessly into his every hot corner. But all Blaine’s got in him is a dumb-heavy grip around his tight waist or a sweaty palm along the thick of his thigh. And still, it isn’t enough.

Blaine never thought he would have Kurt to hold like this; and now that he does, he wants it more than he ever did, or ever knew he could. So why, now, is he not _holding him_?

Underneath Kurt, Blaine shuffles and makes himself sit up more, gets his ass and thighs under him and his back straighter along the headboard. It jostles his cock just-so inside of Kurt that they both moan and _squirm_ , Kurt tensing in a sweet little startled writhe beneath Blaine’s eager hands, but once Blaine’s got his balance he just hauls Kurt _closer_ , hands spanning the delicate knobs of his spine, till they’re sticky-chest-to-chest with Kurt sitting entirely in Blaine’s lap, knees nudging up to the pillows, nose eskimoing up along Blaine’s own. His smile is sex-strained but beautiful, and he kisses Blaine so _softly_ , his lips like Blaine wishes his hands could be, his arms curled strong but tender up over Blaine’s own and across his back. Blaine touches Kurt’s shoulderblades, his hair, his everything. He feels the sweat roll between them and hates how it feels but loves what it means.

In this position, Blaine’s pinned down by pretty much Kurt’s entire weight along his hips and thighs, and he’s – smaller, than Kurt, basically can’t move now, at least not enough to fully contribute to what Kurt might want out of this. But Blaine doesn’t _care_ – the crush of his hips down into the mattress is an entirely secondary side effect of _having Kurt Hummel on his dick in his bed_ and the solid weight is the most grounding, reassuring thing in his whirlwind life right now, sweet pressure and hard loveliness and _god_ , it’s so beautiful and that’s not even the best part. The best part is, Kurt’s not lolling his head back in ecstasy, or closing his eyes shut against it all, even as his tight-hot inner walls shift and clench with the slow, hard-grinding way he’s fucking himself on Blaine’s cock. No – Kurt is looking at him, really _looking_ at him, always taking care to pull back and stare deep and clear into Blaine’s eyes between each lush, hungry kiss. Blaine’s roving hands finally alight on the small of Kurt’s back, just above his plush plunging ass, just beyond his hipbones, and Kurt cups his right hand overtop of Blaine’s left, and his left hand around Blaine’s face, rubbing soft and soothing in both places even as he rolls and bobs on Blaine’s desperate cock, their gazes never breaking, and it’s an innocent but shockingly intimate touch that twists Blaine’s heart up too, too tight because –

Kurt wants this too. Kurt’s cock is throbbing wet and untouched between them, sliding in the press of their stomachs together with little else for friction, but Kurt looks _close_ , and it’s not because of any fantasy of Blaine he’s built up in his head after watching him through a window, not because Blaine’s getting raunchy or performative and begging Kurt to do the same. It’s from the touch of Blaine’s hands and the press of Blaine’s body and the things Blaine is really, actually doing to him, right now, in real time, skin to skin in Blaine’s bed, and Blaine honestly feels like his _heart_ – not just his cock, he thinks wryly – is sinking deep inside of Kurt, too, consumed by him even as it feels, somehow, freed. He feels it like the sensation of popping your hip mid-stretch – something cracks so exquisitely inside him, his whole soul feeling _bigger_ , the most wide-open and grateful and incredible thing he’s ever known.

Seeing the same thing in the depths of Kurt’s eyes, as they drive each other higher and brighter toward climax, Blaine knows – that’s love.

He _heaves_ his hips up just right on Kurt’s downward grind and goes the deepest he’s gone, and Kurt _sobs._ “Fuck, Blaine, don’t stop don’t stop that’s _it_ – ” Kurt’s eyes roll closed just once, wetter and impossibly bluer when they open again, and he steals one hand between them to wrap around his own leaking cock but Blaine reaches in, too, covers his hand on his cock with his own and cups his other arm tighter around Kurt’s back, pressing them close, closer, so close they can barely focus their eyes on each other.

“I love you,” Blaine whimpers, his thrusts small, but forceful, but beginning to falter.

“I love you so much, Blaine, please – ”

“No, Kurt, listen,” Blaine insists, even as he has to pause because he just hit Kurt so _good_ inside that he nearly comes right then and there. “I love you. And I always will.”

Kurt kisses him desperately again, and it’s with his tongue in Kurt’s mouth and his cock in Kurt’s ass that Kurt finally comes, his mouth falling open against Blaine’s in a soft, overwhelmed sound, his breath hot and wet against Blaine’s chin, his muscles seizing up in stark relief under his creamy-white skin, and Blaine can’t help but _stare_ at it all because he’s seen Kurt come before, but never this close. Never when Blaine’s been able to _hold him_ and watch the pure, euphoric release wash all over his whole self, and Blaine is so in love with him that even this messy-sweet thing with Kurt’s come spilling all across his own stomach and down into the coarse hair of his groin is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. It’s no seduction, no teasing display, just _Kurt –_ and it’s because he _has_ Blaine now, and knows it, and doesn’t have to be anything but himself. And knowing that Kurt’s given himself over so wholly to what they’re doing here that he can just let _go_ is one of the most powerful, erotic things Blaine has ever _known_ –

“Mmm, Blaine,” says Kurt, voice high and slurred and throaty as he comes down, “come on, keep going – ” He hasn’t pulled off yet, still clenching tight and tighter around Blaine’s cock, bouncing more now that he’s less worried about his own orgasm – _fuck,_ he’s tight now that he’s come, and he’s riding heavy and unhurried, hips rolling and pulsing, digging _in_ on the downstroke, and Blaine clings him _closer_ , both arms wrapped tight around his waist now in a sweaty clutch, his chin hooked over Kurt’s shoulder, his thighs _trembling_ underneath Kurt’s own, Kurt’s breath warm and seductive against the fine hairs along the back of his neck –  

 _Oh_.

He pulls back just enough to kiss him again, spears his cock up into the hot clamp around him, and comes again, his own eyes tearing up as it drenches him like a sudden summer rainstorm, his muscles straining and his veins singing with blood. It’s softer than his orgasm from earlier but it’s so much more _intense_ , running deep and love-soaked inside of him, and when Kurt slumps into his chest, not even bothering to lift up off Blaine’s softening cock, that grounding weight of his body pressing Blaine into the mattress is more sweet comfort than any blanket. Blaine falls right to sleep.

\--

He can’t have been out for long, but Blaine’s still fuzzy and fogged when he wakes, trying to reconstruct the past couple hours in his head and determine what could have led him to here and now, sleeping with his contacts in, sunlight streaming in serenely from his wide-open bedroom window and his muscles aching gloriously like he had the best, most productive workout of his life. Or, _oh_ , or like –

There’s the thump of Coconut jumping down to the floor from a higher surface and then she chirrups just a couple of times, loud and sweet, and a soft and sweet answer comes. “No, honey, shhh, let him rest some – your daddy’s been having a very rough couple of weeks, you know.”

“ _Kurt_ ,” Blaine sighs, his whole insides frothing with happiness like clear champagne. He stretches his limbs out in every direction, tense-then-loose-again under his messy top sheet, and then slides out of the bed and has to stretch again once he’s standing up. ( _Damn_.) He finds a pair of pajama pants half-under his bed and tugs them on, scratching a hand through the back of his totally-destroyed hair and heading out into his apartment.

There’s Kurt, leaning beautiful and casual against Blaine’s kitchen counter, and he’s smiling down at Coconut on the floor but he raises his head immediately to look at Blaine when he enters. Kurt’s wearing his cute Oscar Wilde shirt and a pair of Blaine’s own boxers, which he must have searched Blaine’s dresser for; Blaine finds that very invasive and yet, surprisingly, also finds that he doesn’t care one bit. He has one cup of coffee in his hands and the machine to his left is sputtering its way through another one. He looks so _right_ right there like this that it’s kind of – beyond overwhelming, the bizarre juxtaposition of seeing him live in person _for the first time ever_ just hours earlier against the ease at which Kurt moves around in Blaine’s space already, making coffee and chattering to his cat. For a moment neither of them can really move beyond the tableau.

In a slow, deliberate motion, Kurt waves with just the fingers of his free hand, and then rests it right on his chest, his smile warmer, more alert. Blaine repeats the gesture right back, a wave, a heartbeat, and then crosses the living room to stand by his side.

“Here,” Kurt says, “you take this one.” He passes Blaine the already-made mug of coffee. “I was hoping I’d get some made for both of us before you woke, but your Keurig is kind of – ”

“An asshole, I know,” says Blaine, laughing softly. “It’s okay, we can share.” He takes a sip – it’s a lot more sugary than he’d make it for himself, but he doesn’t really mind – and then passes it back to Kurt, who seems touched, and drinks a little himself. Coconut jumps up on the counter beside them, and Blaine absently starts scratching along her back. Kurt does, too, and their fingers tangle against each other along her fur. She’s purring.

“I hope you don’t mind that I opened the windows, but I thought it might – air some things out,” says Kurt. He blushes a little, a high kiss of pink across his cheeks. “Your place is nice. Aside from your asshole coffee machine, at least. It’s interesting to finally see more of it than half your bedroom.” He manages a wink, which Blaine returns.

“It was nicer when Tina still lived here, I think,” says Blaine. “But not bad now. Here, I can give you the grand tour.”

“I’d like that.”

Blaine shows him the living room, tidy and sparse but looking a little less empty these days, with Coconut’s bed and box of playthings occupying their own corner now, and a new art-nouveau-style Batman and Robin poster on one wall. (Kurt doesn’t comment on that one aloud, but his arched eyebrow is enough, and Blaine feels his ears go red-hot, just a little.) He shows Kurt the room that used to be Tina’s, which now just contains a stack or two of cardboard boxes, a flimsy half-filled garment rack, and Blaine’s keyboard, set up shyly in the corner. Kurt traces his fingers over the silent keys like someone who knows what he’s doing, and Blaine smiles at him, watching the play of their dexterity and strength. He shows him the tiny bathroom where Blaine sheepishly stops to clean up just a little from earlier. Kurt faithfully holds his coffee mug for him until he’s done.

They end up back in the bedroom and Blaine shows Kurt his closet (“your _shoes_ , oh my goodness!”), and then some pictures around his desk, identifying Elliot and Tristan and Tina (“Oh, I’ve seen her, in and out in the building once or twice”) in photographs from the past couple of years, or even earlier, that one ubiquitous snapshot of Blaine and Sam in their Dalton uniforms looking like idiots that Mercedes seems to include in every photo collage, ever. Kurt coos at his blazer and snorts with laughter at Sam’s conspicuously-dyed blond hair. They end up settled back on the bed, sitting side by side and finishing the last of their coffees with their feet and ankles knocking and brushing and tangling together, sharing more photos, from their phones and Facebook albums.

“This is kind of old,” says Kurt, “but I just think it’s so sweet I haven’t ever been able to delete it.” It’s a shot of Dani and Santana crammed into a chair that’s clearly not meant to hold two people, and one of Dani’s knees is almost twice the size of the other; Santana’s holding a bag of frozen strawberries on it, across her own lap, and they’re both laughing, pulling faces that aren’t photo-finish perfect, a little unflattering, but so real and alive. “Dani told me later this is the exact moment she knew she loved Santana. Santana’s such a huge bitch but she genuinely cared for her during this roller derby-crippled time in her life. I think she painted her toenails for her later, too.”

“That’s very sweet,” Blaine agrees, though he matches the slight wryness in Kurt’s voice with his own also. “And how lovely to have caught it on camera.”

“I guess the spirit moved me and I just knew somehow,” says Kurt, laughing a little. He knocks his knee full into Blaine’s and then closes out of his phone, setting it beside their empty mugs on Blaine’s bedside table, and looking at him close-up and wide-open.

“Blaine, did you ever have something like that?”

“Kurt – ”

“It’s stupid. But I don’t know, it just…you keep saying you _love_ me and I believe you, Blaine, god, it feels so right and true and I feel – the same – and I guess I just wondered. How it was for you.” He shrugs, stiffens. “Forget I asked.”

“No,” says Blaine, resting his hand over Kurt’s, and he stops, and thinks about it. He tries to play back the history of their beautiful, unconventional relationship in reverse, skimming over anecdotes and conversations, piecing their shared months together. The first time Kurt mentioned his mother, maybe – but then, no, because if he pushes backward, that feeling, the deep-plumbed swell of his heart, it started way before that. Back around when he first got Coconut. Or earlier, even earlier than that, the first time he heard Kurt laugh or the first time Kurt politely declined the open invitation to get off together – it feels smaller but no less alive, back then, like a tiny fledgling plant inside him that just steadily grew and grew toward the sky, photosynthesizing, and stronger for it. Bigger, but not any more real.

“I don’t think there was a – moment, for me,” says Blaine, at last. He slips both of his hands around one of Kurt’s, tracing patterns against his pale strong skin softly, so softly, the sorts of cherished touches that amazing beautiful Kurt deserves to be touched with. “I used to play this – sort of game, with myself, about you. I would make up different versions of who you must be, you know, over there, with your late-night work hours and your amazing clothes and your gorgeous body – “ He lets his thumbs roll a little harder into the ball of Kurt’s own thumb at that, and he feels Kurt shiver, just a little. “And I think it’s because something inside me already knew I was in love with you, and was trying to figure out why, and _how_. It’s like it kind of happened just slow and easy, just filling me up until it felt like that’s how it always was.”

Kurt kisses him, deep but softly, no intention behind it beyond just to kiss him and taste him. Blaine’s little inside plant soaks it up like sunshine. Kurt’s eyes, when they pull apart, are warm and shining exactly the color of his T-shirt.

“Now,” says Blaine, “ _admitting_ it to myself, that is an entirely different story…and pretty embarrassing, so.” He laughs to kind of kill the mood, eager to be back in less cataclysmically serious territory. “What about you, hmm? Any big revelatory moments?”

“Oh,” says Kurt. “Well, for me it was the video.”

Blaine’s face scrunches up in confusion, because the shift is abrupt and that makes _no_ sense. “The video? What video?”

Kurt’s eyes go wider, bluer. “Oh my god you don’t know about the video.” He leans across Blaine to snatch his phone back up and springs to action, tapping into YouTube and searching for something Blaine can’t quite read over his shoulder.

“What video?”

“You _don’t know about the video_.” Kurt’s leg is jigging antsily up against Blaine’s own, and that’s so not an answer to Blaine’s question, but then he must find what he’s looking for because he presses his phone into Blaine’s hands, and there on the screen is a video called –

_ROCK SHOP Midtown – busker doing PIANO MAN (cute guy!!)_

The image is shaky and blurry, obviously shot from a cell phone and not even an incredibly nice or recent one, but the audio is unmistakable: it’s Blaine, singing Billy Joel in the storefront window at work, the keyboard weaker than the real piano he’d need to really handle the song but still mostly okay, just like Blaine remembers it. Because god, now Blaine _remembers_ it, remembers that cute chubby girl with the enormous handbag who was there that day, the day he filled in for a missing performer on their roster and just kind of sang a few tunes that he knew he could play on short notice, and how she was filming at least part of his set with a huge smile on her face. He had no _idea_ she’d put it up for public consumption, and though he can’t help but preen a little at _(cute guy!!)_ , he’s mostly just amazed at how Kurt managed to find it. Was he looking for Piano Man covers on YouTube? Did Elliot show Dani who showed Santana who showed Kurt, in their continued surreal connections?

That’s when the clip ends, and Blaine’s eyes tick down to the info box underneath the video, and holy _shit_ , this tiny crappy video of him playing Billy Joel has –

“Eighteen _thousand_ views?” Blaine’s head swings up to stare at Kurt again, and he just hopes that the face he’s making right now isn’t too much more ridiculous than laughing-in-love Santana and Dani. “Kurt, how in the _hell_ – ” Eighteen thousand views. Elliot and Rian’s burlesque troupe’s videos get, like, four thousand at max, and they have a dedicated fanbase that watches and shares everything. The only video of someone Blaine knows personally with that many hits is his dumb brother’s dumb Free Credit Rating commercial.

“Someone at work shared it with me, and you can imagine the restraint it took not to react like I knew you,” says Kurt, slowly taking his phone back. “I – it’d be embarrassing and kind of creepy to tell you how many of those views are me. Not gonna apologize, though.” He curls the corner of his mouth in a little smirk. “Well, maybe, but only for having the upper hand on you this whole time. I’d seen you sing and perform way before we ever started even texting.”

“God, Kurt – ”

“The point is, Blaine, that you’re _really good_.” Kurt turns, where he’s sitting on the bed, to look more directly at Blaine, the phone discarded again, both of Blaine’s hands in both of his. “There’s nothing mockable or scandalous about this video to generate more traffic, which means people are watching because you’re _good_. You’re eighteen thousand views good. And I think it’s – ” He pauses, and Blaine watches the flicker across his face, he’s _steeling himself_ , but why – “You’re _too_ good. To let your parents’ crap and your brother’s crap hold you back. You could go back to school for performing. Do what you _want_ to do – you could.”

Blaine’s throat is closing up thick and froggy, his grip on Kurt’s hands squeezing too-tight and trembling. He suddenly can’t look straight at Kurt any more without his eyes watering, like staring into the sun. “I just…there’s so _much_ to – I mean, with my job, like it is now, how would I even get the money?”

“Eighteen thousand views good is scholarship good.”

“Where would I even _go_?” This sweet, romantic conversation about falling in love has suddenly whirled off to thirty other places and Blaine’s head is spinning with the racing changes, trying but mostly failing to keep up with its own frantic anxieties. This is so much. His life is so _much_ now, what is _happening_ –

“Just – promise me you’ll think about it?” Kurt strokes his thumbs along the backs of Blaine’s hands in a cool, soothing motion, and Blaine tries to focus on that, instead, and focuses on – _god_ , he’s so in love with Kurt, and the way Kurt just _cares_ about him. He nods, weakly, afraid to try to speak around the lump in his throat.

“More coffee?”

“Yes please.”

They don’t talk much as they shuffle around the kitchen together, but they don’t really need to, falling into a comfortable, quiet rhythm, and separately processing everything they’ve shared together today. Because it’s – a lot. Blaine’s panic is petering out, but he’s not too besotted to pull back a step from his own life and realize that things have gone _completely bonkers_ in the past few hours, and in the past few weeks. His whole world sounds like one of those absurd news articles that you click on just because the headline seems too preposterous to be true – _New York City man finds love after masturbating in full view of Queens alleyway_. The kind of crap his brother always shares on Facebook, and now that crap is _his_ crap, and it’s so far from crap, it’s _beautiful_ , and Blaine has to accept that even if he’s not too besotted to be self-aware, he _is_ kind of too besotted to care. Thinking back to life before Kurt, before tumbling down this incredible rabbit hole head-first, Blaine can see how much he was lying to himself about being okay with where he was. He was alone, stagnant, pathetic and kind of afraid. Now, he’s – well, okay, he’s _really_ afraid, he’s absolutely terrified, but at least he’s _moving_ , and he’s doing it hand-in-hand with someone more amazing than he ever thought he’d find in his lifetime, someone beyond what he even knew was possible or real in this world. Someone who not only loves and cares about him but wants _more_ for him, and wants to share in that moreness, to be part of it.

Blaine is in love, and it’s the real fucking deal this time, because they’re sharing coffee and petting his cat together, and laughing about YouTube videos, and still barely wearing clothes after a slow, passionate slew of lovemaking in the middle of the goddamn day. And it’s _that_ beautiful, mind-blowing high that Blaine must still be riding when he says the ridiculous thing he says in the next leg of their conversation.

“This is so amazing, you know, everything about today has been incredible,” says Kurt, “but I _am_ kind of going to miss the back-alley strip tease sex.” They’re done with the coffee for now, and have wandered back into the bedroom, and Kurt fondles along the curtain in Blaine’s window, rustling the fabric with a caress that looks almost intimate.

“We don’t have to stop,” says Blaine, grinning back. “Some nights we could still go for it. Since we both – like it so much.” He gathers up his soiled clothes from earlier and goes to put them in his hamper.

“Mm, not quite,” says Kurt, “considering I don’t live in that apartment any more.”

Blaine halts, and turns to look at him. “Wait, what?”

“Unfortunately.” Kurt gives a dramatic sigh. “Part of this whole Chandler business means neither one of us can afford that apartment now. We could kind of only handle it if we were doing it together. He’s shacking up with his little redheaded fun-derstudy and I’m gonna crash with Finn and Rachel until I can find some place to – ”

“Move in with me.”

(There it is.)

“Ummm, I don’t know if that’s – ”

“I’m serious,” says Blaine, and he realizes in the exact moment he says it, standing here with his come-stained underwear in one hand, that oh, shit, he is. “My apartment’s plenty big enough for both of us, and Coconut really seems to like you so she won’t be an issue either – ”

“Blaine – ”

“Plus,” he presses on, “if we’re both living here and pooling our wages like you were with him, then that helps out with my pay-cut at work and maybe I could start looking into music programs like you said, and you wouldn’t even have to move your stuff very far, it’d be just like when we sent Tina over there in the spring – Oh!”

Kurt’s crossed from the window and snatched Blaine up around the waist, kissing him deep and _hard_ , and this time with a _ton_ of intent behind it. His hands are warm and grabby at Blaine’s bare back, stroking all over his shoulders and the backs of his ribs, and the laundry falls back to the floor, entirely forgotten. Blaine drops his mouth open and sucks Kurt’s tongue up inside, swaying a little on his feet as they fall entirely into one another, kissing and sucking and nipping and oh, god, this T-shirt is made of something _magical_ because the way Blaine can feel every hard shift of muscle through the slinky fabric is _obscene_ –

“Is that a yes?” he says breathlessly, when Kurt allows him to speak again.

“We should – talk about this, Blaine,” says Kurt, with his voice anyway, even as his hands and his body and the lips sliding hot down Blaine’s neck say something else entirely. “God, we’re getting ahead of ourselves – we haven’t even really talked through the _other_ things – the window thing – the Chandler thing – ”

“We should,” Blaine agrees faintly, because that’s what he’s supposed to say, isn’t he? They’re supposed to be mature, rational adults about all this. There’s a ton of baggage crammed into a very small space between them that they haven’t even begun to unpack, like how their relationship being secret for months has messed with their heads and hearts and how Kurt’s breaking up with someone he _lived with_ to be with Blaine. How Blaine might go back to school, and how Kurt might move in with _him_ instead, and how both of them had just casually proposed these life-altering changes as options as if that were the right and obvious thing to do right here on the first day they’ve genuinely spent in one another’s company. Only – right now Blaine doesn’t _care_. Right now, with Kurt’s mouth and body warm and generous on his, Kurt’s cock going agreeably hard again where it nudges at his hip, Blaine doesn’t want to be a mature, rational adult. He just wants to take Kurt back into his bed in the warm nearly-September sunlight streaming in through his open window, and –

Not his bed.

Slowly, Blaine turns their embrace until his back is to the window, and then begins walking them backward, thrilling in the way Kurt’s lips keep chasing after his, anxious to stay together as he moves. He curls his hands into Kurt’s silky-soft T-shirt and tugs harder, needing them closer, until finally, he reaches one arm back to slam the glass of the window shut, and leans his back and shoulders hard on it, wrapping one leg up and around Kurt’s own to press them flush.

He sucks slick at Kurt’s mouth one last time before pulling back to speak. “We don’t have to stop,” he says again.

Blaine sees the realization spark and catch behind Kurt’s eyes, and he sees Kurt’s breath hitch in his chest below that tight-slinked T-shirt, right before he draws back and yanks it off. The boxers follow, and then Blaine’s own pants, snatched off him until they’re naked again and god Kurt just looks so _perfect,_ cock hard and stomach tight and thighs coiled thick, heavy breathing making his chest look even broader, and Blaine can’t help but just _stare_ at him. He’s so hot.

The thing is – Kurt’s staring right back at him, a starry loose-jawed expression on his face that must reflect Blaine’s own, and Blaine – feels _hot_ , too. He feels sexy, sexual, and it makes him want to flex his arms up harder or twist tight and teasing at his waist and his hips, lick his lips, dip his eyelashes low. His heart pounds in his chest and his dick throbs full and hard.

“God,” Blaine breathes, “we’re so hot.”

Kurt crashes into him and Blaine’s back rattles against the sun-warmed glass. His head thunks almost-painful against it but he doesn’t _care_ , not when Kurt is devouring his mouth and frotting hard up against him, and he reaches down because he _needs_ to touch Kurt’s phenomenal ass but Kurt stops him, long fingers curled around each wrist pinning them to the window at Blaine’s back, up and out of the way as Kurt crowds his body closer. The gentle, subtle aggression makes Blaine _whimper_. It’s a noise straight out of that animal inside of him and he feels wild with it, bolder, hungrier.

“Mmm, Kurt,” he whines, high and breathy and bubbling out of him, “you’re so – oh, _fuck_!” Because one of Kurt’s hands has left Blaine’s wrist and is instead now twisted through his hair, tugging hard and wrenching his head back so Kurt can kiss along his neck. “Kurt, that’s – ”

“I know,” says Kurt, sounding way too smug. “I know what you like.” He kisses and nips just a little bit harder, tangling his fingers tighter – god, it’s like a string of firecrackers shot off up Blaine’s spine, his whole scalp tingling, his cock throbbing – and rolling the thumb of his other hand hard along the tendons in Blaine’s wrist. “I remember.” He ruts his cock all along the line of Blaine’s own, and Blaine feels wetness drag out of both of them, messy, incredible. “I like it too.”

Blaine yanks his hands from Kurt’s grasp, grabs onto Kurt’s shoulders and _jumps_ up, wraps his legs tight around Kurt’s waist so that his cock slides against Kurt’s tight belly and Kurt’s skids along the crack of his ass. They’re kissing again, slick and hungry even as they’re smiling, because – god, they’re _hot_. They’re hot enough to fuck against a window in broad daylight and not care who sees them. Blaine feels the muscle of Kurt’s shoulders roll and bulge as he readjusts to support Blaine’s weight more, grabbing him high around his waist with one arm, keeping the other hand tangled in his hair. Every plane of Kurt’s body feels hard and unyielding against him, skin so soft but body so _solid_ that Blaine wants to melt and rut against him, and he does, seeking more friction for his aching cock, touching him everywhere. His sweat slides and smears on the glass at his back in a dirty reminder that makes him _want_ , and they grab and thrust and grind, almost dancing, finding a rhythm within themselves, showing off. Blaine twists his hips in a way that has Kurt _moaning_ into his mouth; Kurt scrapes his fingernails hard into Blaine’s skin, pulls his hair prickling-tight.

“You should fuck me in an elevator,” Blaine pants against him, their hips rolling in perfect sync. “Praying no one gets on – flinching at every new floor, hoping it won’t stop – “

“In a dressing room at the mall,” says Kurt, as Blaine sucks thickly at his earlobe, scraping with his teeth, clutching sweaty-palmed across his broad, intoxicatingly masculine back. “ _Oh_ , have me up against those mirrors so we can see, I can see, have to be quiet – “

“You should fuck me,” says Blaine, “right here against this goddamn window.”

Kurt steadies Blaine back onto his feet and then slides to his knees. He sucks loose, sloppy, hungry around Blaine’s cock, tonguing into the slit of his head and the seam of his balls. He nibbles into the thick hair below Blaine’s navel and Blaine stiffens and shudders, toes curling against the floor. Then he spins Blaine around, broad hands heavy at the smallest part of Blaine’s waist, and licks long, sucking kisses into Blaine’s hole, till the rim of him is pink and oversensitive, going tingly and sharp. Blaine braces his forearms against the glass of the window and can see his reflection there, and he looks fucked-out already, sweaty and messy and X-rated in a way that has him touching himself, staring transfixed at the slide of his cock in and out of the tunnel of his own fist. Kurt bites hard at the inner underside curve of Blaine’s left asscheek, and Blaine moans, and loves how filthy it sounds. He touches himself more, harder, tweaks his own nipples, slides a curved hand up along his own neck. Kurt vanishes from his side just for a second to grab the condoms and lube.

Outside, the sirens of a fire truck whirr to life, and Blaine watches as the engine takes off down the street. The head of his cock slides wet and streaky against the glass in front of him. Blaine feels like he could fly.

Kurt fucks him into the window. His long, flush-red cock feels just as huge inside as Blaine imagined it would, god, he’s so _full_ , each drag in and out along his over-stimulated rim an exquisite torture, the grind of the fat head of him against Blaine’s prostate electric-hot. Even back-to-front like this, Blaine can watch him in the faint reflections of the window, their soft-edged outlines tinted midday yellow-white, and Blaine watches Kurt watch him, watches Kurt watch himself. He feels their eyes on each other like an extra set of hands, and can barely breathe with how hot they are, lean-muscled arms tangled around each other where they stroke at their own bodies, each other’s bodies, grinding together with Kurt’s strong, smooth chest pressed flush to Blaine’s broad back, his heartbeat rattling hard at Blaine’s shoulder as they thrust and writhe. Kurt pets his hair hard and possessive front-to-back, his scalp tingling and his cock jerking with it, or holds his hip, wraps his hand around Blaine’s hand around Blaine’s cock and tugs hard and merciless, sinks his teeth into Blaine’s shoulder. It’s so, so much – it’s everything.

“You’re like _porn_ ,” Kurt says, jolting his hips _hard_ into Blaine, big cock throbbing inside, jabbing just right. “We’re like something I made up to get off to.”

“You make me want to be so good,” says Blaine, moaning, forehead pressed into the window. Each thrust hitches his body up and off the floor just a little, up onto his toes. He rolls his head sideways for a sloppy, off-center kiss, his chest pushing harder into the sweat-smeared glass. “We should make a tape. We should win _awards_.”

“Mmm, the Golden Globe for best cam boy,” Kurt teases, nipping him on the chin, sliding in hard and grinding, grinding. “Blaine Anderson.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Blaine, “we’d share.”

“Of course,” says Kurt. “Have your cake and eat it too.” He kisses him again, and Blaine thinks – that sounds about right. If the man he saw one night from across a darkened alley, touching himself like it’s an art form – the man who woke up this bright, hungry animal inside of him from far away, made him come alive with his eyes on him, staring, _seeing_ – the man he fell in love with before he even knew his name – if that man wants to move into his apartment, help him get back the life he wants, and wake that animal up right _here_ in their bedroom window every night until they _both_ have it down to an art, Blaine doesn’t think he can really ask for anything more.

Kurt presses his hand flat over Blaine’s heart and then nails him right in the prostate. He comes all over the window, and hopes they weren’t the only ones around to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end y'all!! Thanks again SO much to all of my tremendous, insanely kind readers who've had beautiful things to say or have just tacitly, sweetly left me little notifications of enjoyment - this is the longest fic I've ever written for this pairing, and the second-longest fic I've ever written ever, so I've been nervous, but I never should have been. You're all wonderful and I hope you continue to go on being just as delightful to other authors and to one another. Cheers for happy endings. ♥♥♥


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